/* Jeremy Zuckerman
"A Peaceful Place"
_The Legend of Korra: Original Music from Book One_ (2013) */
XINQIWU, SANYUE 12, 291 ASC
(FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2410 GSC)
AIR TEMPLE ISLAND, YUE BAY, DIQIU
Early evening on Air Temple Island was one of the more peaceful
times of the day for the people living there. The sun was just setting
over the Mo Ce Sea, casting the island in long shadows from the temple
buildings. The evening meal had already passed, and most of the Air
Acolytes were either studying, meditating, or engaged in the minor tasks
needed to maintain the structures on the island, which in their own way
were a form of meditation.
One of the acolytes was taking his time sweeping the stones of
the airbending training area near the turning gates. With smooth,
regular strokes he brushed the litter from the rock around him towards
the bamboo garden that bordered the area. The evening breeze stirred
the bamboo, causing a pleasing rustle that was soothing to the spirit.
As such, he initially paid the slow stirring of the airbending
gates no mind. Such things often happened as the wind crossed over the
island, situated as it was between Yue Bay and the sea beyond. However,
he began to take notice as the spinning of the gates became more
intense, and he stopped his work to take a quick look around. None of
the masters or their children appeared to be nearby, so for a moment he
was puzzled as to what could be causing this phenomenon.
Then he began to see the figures, intermittently, through the
spinning gates. They at first seemed to be mirages, but as he watched,
they began to appear more solid, though still half-formed through the
blurring wood panels.
There was only one person who could do that. He immediately set
aside his broom to hurry back to the main compound. The masters had to
be informed: The Avatar had returned.
Between the spinning airbending gates, Avatar Korra twisted and
whirled, dancing the fine arc between the Spirit and Material worlds.
She felt the sweet caress of spirit energy around her, danced along the
curves of reality, and led herself and her traveling companions through
the veils to her destination. The world flickered around her, shifting
into a single clear image, which she resolutely moved toward.
By the time Korra stepped off the platform, the gates were just
beginning to slow down. She performed a little hop forward, to provide
room for her friends to finish the transit without being hit by the
spinning panels. She knew just how much that could put a damper on
one's day.
Smiling, she turned around to face them, performing a quick
headcount, though she would have known immediately if there had been any
problem. Five (well, or six, depending on how you reckoned it) people,
one tiger; as expected. She was intrigued to note, just for an instant,
that the brand on Corwin Ravenhair's forehead had been glowing - it had
gone out just as she turned to look at him. That light was the sign of
what she interpreted as his Aesir equivalent of the Avatar State; she
supposed simply standing amid what they'd just been doing was enough to
resonate with his celestial blood.
"Everything go OK back there?" she asked, receiving nods,
murmurs of agreement, and thumbs-up gestures in reply. "Good, good..."
"Yeah, looks like we're all in one piece..." Utena Tenjou
trailed off as she finally noticed the view across the bay. "... Oh
-wow-."
Korra grinned, watching their faces as they took in the
view - especially the faces of Utena and Anne Cross. She knew that look
very well, for she had once worn the same expression of wide-eyed
amazement upon witnessing the soaring skyscrapers and pagoda towers
nestled in the mountain valleys beyond, the suspension bridges crossing
the rivers of the harbor, the patrol and commuter airships weaving their
way across the skies.
"As a wise and noble hobo once said to me," Korra said as she
turned forward once more and gestured out towards the gleaming, sunset-
gilded skyline,
"... Welcome to Republic City!"
I have a message from another time...
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
presents
UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
- SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 5 -
SUITE FOR TRINITY AND AVATAR (THE DIQIU SUITE)
First Movement: Honeymoon by the Sea
Benjamin D. Hutchins
Philip J. Moyer
(c) 2013 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
"It's amazing," said Utena, and she meant it. Ever since the
first time she'd seen it, New Avalon had been her benchmark for Amazing
Big Cities, but Republic City could contend in the same weight class.
It wasn't as big or as tall (to get all of New Avalon into the frame,
you'd have to be a lot further back), but it might well have been as
handsome, and its architectural idiom was recognizably very different,
even at this distance. She was already looking forward to getting a
closer look - a much closer look - at it.
With all that to look at, it was a minute or two before
anyone in the group had occasion to turn around and check out the
-other- view, that of the place where they had just arrived. This was
worth a second look as well, in its own way: a handsome collection of
blue-roofed buildings set in neatly manicured grounds, giving the
impression that it might be a small and prosperous college or vacation
retreat. The local skyline was dominated by a single tall tower, made
taller still by having been constructed atop the highest point of land
in the vicinity. With evening coming on, lights began appearing in the
windows of various buildings, while the grounds were illuminated by what
appeared to be gaslamps and occasional torches.
"This is Air Temple Island," Korra explained, leading the way
along a smoothly paved stone path around what appeared to be a martial
arts practice ring of one sort or another. "Home to one of the world's
five communities of Air Acolytes. They're monks who study the ways of
the ancient nomadic airbenders, and tend to the modern-day Air Nomads
when they pass this way."
"Do they eventually graduate and become Nomads themselves?" Anne
wondered, but Korra shook her head.
"The Acolytes aren't airbenders," she said. "They follow the
Air Nomads' old ways to honor them, but so far as we know, no amount of
study can make a bender out of someone who wasn't born with the gift."
She spied movement in the distance and smiled. "Speaking of which, here
comes someone who was."
Following Korra's eyeline, the others looked up toward the tower
and saw a flying shape, its path curving gracefully through the air to
describe a gentle spiral down toward them. As it drew nearer, this
remarkable figure turned out to be a man, tall and thin, dressed in
saffron and yellow robes and riding what appeared to be a very large fan
or kite. As he alighted near them, he spun the fan in his hand and
caused it to collapse into a six-foot-long staff, which he then leaned
in the crook of a nearby tree limb to free his hands. This close,
Korra's companions could see that he was long-faced, grey-eyed, and
pale, bald and sporting a neatly trimmed iron-grey mustache. A wide
blue arrow tattoo curved up and over his scalp, pointing downward
between his eyebrows. He was one of those men who wore middle age
ambiguously, with no particular clues as to which end of that long curve
he was really at.
"Avatar Korra," he said gravely, placing his right fist against
the open palm of his upright left hand and bowing his head.
"Master Rohan," Korra replied, making the slightly different
salute of her own native Water Tribe (right fist loosely enclosed in
left hand) in return; then the two smiled and performed a complicated
secret handshake before embracing like the old friends they obviously
were.
"Welcome home," said Rohan in a much warmer, less formal tone of
voice. "And you've brought us visitors," he went on, turning to face
the group she'd brought with her. His long face lighting up with
delight, he cried, "Corwin!" and gave the young man a hug as well, then
bowed deeply to Kaitlyn and said he was very pleased to see her again.
"Rohan, I want you to meet some new friends," said Korra
cheerfully. "This is Utena Tenjou, Corwin's new bride," she went on,
tossing Utena a wink. "Their wedding was earlier today. And this is
Anthy Tenjou, her wife." If Rohan thought there was anything strange
about that, he was a master thespian indeed, because nothing but
pleasant welcome showed on his face as he bowed first to one lady, then
the other, even going so far as to kiss Anthy's hand and declare himself
enchanted.
"Anne Cross, Kaitlyn's kenjutsu student," Korra went on, putting
a hand on the young girl's shoulder. Identifying her as a martial
artist got the airbender salute for her, which, after a half-second's
hesitation, she answered with the one for firebenders Korra had shown
her the night before. That got a raised eyebrow and a twinkle-eyed
little smile out of Rohan, causing Anne to blush slightly. "And this,"
Korra finished, "is Sergei."
Kaitlyn was amused to see that even the unflappable airbender,
who hadn't reacted even a little bit to Korra's matter-of-fact capsule
summary of the Ravenhair-Tenjou domestic situation, was taken slightly
aback by the sight of a full-grown tiger - and further amused to see
that it was -only- slightly, after which he gave the tiger a bow and a
pleasant greeting just as if he had been an honored human visitor to the
island.
"Now, it's pretty late in the evening where we just came from,"
said Korra pragmatically as Rohan collected his glider staff from the
tree and they all set off along the path again, "so the first order of
business should be to get everyone's quarters figured out. Which won't
be that hard, come to think of it. Anthy, Kate, Anne, you'll be staying
with me in the ladies' dormitory," she went on, gesturing to one of the
buildings. "As for -you- two," she added to Corwin and Utena, "you
should head into town. Remember the Phoenix House, Corwin?"
"Hard to forget," he said with a smile.
Korra grinned. "True. Go there and give the person at the desk
my card," she said, handing him such an object. "They'll take care of
you. You're set up for three nights, it's all taken care of. My
wedding present to the pair of you," she added, her grin becoming a bit
sentimental.
"Wow," said Corwin. "Thanks."
"Yes, thank you," Utena added earnestly.
"When you return to the island on Monday," Rohan told them, "the
Grand Lotus wishes to speak with you. I trust you received her token?"
"Do you mean this?" Utena asked, removing from her shorts pocket
the white lotus pai sho tile Izumi had given her at the end of the
wedding.
"I do," said Rohan with a smile. "Excellent. Not that she
would refuse to see you if you hadn't packed it," he added wryly, "but
she does love her symbols, and I've found it's generally best to humor
her."
Corwin chuckled, an I-get-it sort of chuckle, and said, "It's
Jinora, isn't it."
"Of course it is," said Rohan cheerfully. "Did you even
entertain for a moment the notion that she might let someone else be in
charge of something?"
"No, you're right, that would be foolish," Corwin agreed. "I'd
be happy to accept her invitation. It'll be good to see her again, even
if she's in one of her Serious Moods."
"But in the meantime," said Kaitlyn, nudging Utena with an
elbow, "you two have some honeymoonin' to do."
"You've missed the last ferry to the mainland for the night,"
Rohan said, "but never mind about that, we can arrange - "
Suddenly a huge and shaggy -shape- appeared, looming up as if
out of nowhere. An immense animal, easily the size of a truck or even a
small railway car, lunged out of the dark and knocked Corwin to the
ground between its massive forepaws, uttering a great bestial roar as it
did so. Heart pounding, Anne jumped back a few paces and snatched her
sword from her back, readying it for the draw - and then hesitated as
three realizations struck her startled consciousness at once:
- The giant beast, though mostly cream-colored, had an arrow of
brown fur on its head in almost exactly the shape of Rohan's tattoo;
- Kaitlyn and Rohan were just standing there with quiet little
smiles, obviously amused, not dismayed (Kate was even photographing the
scene); and
- Far from being in Crisis Mode herself at this sudden
development, Korra was instead -laughing fit to bust.- The Avatar had
collapsed against Rohan's shoulder, genuinely -wracked- with the kind of
laughter that came in sobbing bursts between sharp, convulsive gasps for
breath, while tears squeezed out of her tightly-closed eyes and streamed
down her face.
At which point, as a confused Anne lowered her weapon, the
monster(?) put out a giant red tongue the size of a sleeping bag and
-licked- Corwin, who was trying (with little success) to fend it off.
"OK, OK, c'mon, Mogi, it's good to see you too," he laughed,
dragging himself from under the beast and climbing to his feet. He
reached and dug his fingers into the shaggy brown fur of the creature's
forehead arrow, scruffling diligently. With a sound that Anne figured
Sergei's satisfied grunt would be like if the tiger weighed ten tons,
the beast sagged to the left and then collapsed on his side in a vast
and undignified six-legged sprawl, eyes rolling with contentment.
"oh, oh, oh man," Korra gasped, wobbling unsteadily away from
Rohan and wiping at her eyes. "Oh, I wish we had a picture of that."
"We do," said Kate, waggling her minicamera, to which Korra
responded with a wordless sound of delight and a jumping hug.
"What... just happened?" Utena wondered.
"Just Mogi renewing acquaintances," said Rohan with a fond
smile. "He hasn't seen Corwin in quite some time, but a sky bison never
forgets his master."
Corwin looked up from scruffling the bison and blinked. "His
what?" he asked.
Rohan eyed him. "Didn't you know?"
Korra looked from one man to the other, then laughed again, less
explosively but still wholeheartedly.
"Of course he didn't know, Rohan!" she said. "This is Corwin
we're talking about." She crossed to the young god and hooked an arm
around his neck, which was really only possible because he was still
bent into his bison-scruffling position, and continued, "He thinks if
you're five and you give a sky bison calf an apple, all it means is 'hey
little guy, have an apple.'" She tilted her head to look him in the
face. "You did, didn't you?"
"I don't know, I was five!" Corwin objected, then frowned. "No,
wait. Yeah, I did. I remember now. I had one from dinner when I went
back out to the cave that night. Mogi was the only one who came out to
see me, so I gave it to him. Sort of an apology for, you know...
stealing his mom."
Rohan whacked his arrow with the heel of one hand. "Oh, for,"
he said, but the rest was lost in semiaudible mumbling.
Corwin looked at him, then the bison, then Korra. "I always
thought he was Ikki's," he said lamely.
"So did I," Korra admitted, "but I guess she just looks after
him while you're away. Which is basically all the time. Man!" she
said, petting Mogi herself. "No wonder he's so lazy."
"Hmmm," said Corwin. He sat down on the ground next to Mogi's
head, one hand still buried in the bison's fur, while the other rubbed
his own head thoughtfully. "Now I feel kind of awful," he concluded
after a few moments' thought.
"Well, you didn't know," Korra pointed out, sitting down beside
him. "And none of the -airbenders,-" she added with a pointed glance at
Rohan, "who evidently -did-," (a second glance, from which Rohan looked
away uncomfortably) "saw fit to -tell- you."
"I'm very confused right now," Utena mused.
"Well," said Corwin, "remember how you were saying the other day
that maybe we all should get a dog?" He made a sort of "ta-da" gesture
toward the bison. "This is better."
Utena stepped closer. Mogi clambered to his feet, took a couple
of snuffling breaths in her direction, then gave her a lick that set her
back a pace or two and grumped contentedly before turning to introduce
himself, a bit more sedately, to the others.
Utena blinked a couple of times, brushed at her shirt, and then
shrugged and said agreeably, "We're gonna need a bigger yard."
Corwin chuckled. "In New Avalon, we haven't got a yard at all!"
he said. "Plenty of roof, though." He stood up, then took Korra's hand
so she could pull herself upright as well. "We'll have to look into the
import/export regulations for Diqiu megafauna. Ah, jeez, aren't sky
bison endangered?"
"They once were, but not for some time now," Rohan said. "You
should run it by Jinora before you leave, all the same, but since you'll
be speaking with her in a few days anyway... "
Korra shook her head with an indulgent smile. "An earthbender
with a sky bison. You've just gotta be you, don't you, Corwin?"
"Kai su, teknon?" Corwin replied sarcastically, making Korra
chuckle.
"On the plus side, you just solved your transportation problem
for tonight," she added cheerfully. "C'mon, Rohan, let's get him
saddled up."
This was a complicated process, but with the aid of several
cheerfully drafted Air Acolytes, it didn't take long, and presently Mogi
was outfitted with a saddle appropriate to his magnificence. It wasn't
really a saddle at all in any conventional sense, since his back was
much too wide for any human being to sit astride of, but rather a sort
of solid platform with raised edges, handholds, and places to secure
baggage, sufficient for several people and their effects.
Korra and Rohan secured the couple's bags at the back of the
platform while Utena and Corwin said their goodbyes for the evening.
Anthy was pleased to find that she only had to assure them once that she
would be perfectly fine until Monday and they should go, have a
wonderful time, and not worry about her at all. Real progress, she
felt, was being made. Then Rohan, with impeccable courtliness, showed
Utena the proper way of climbing up to the saddle with dignity intact.
Corwin didn't follow her; instead he clambered up onto the top of Mogi's
great head and took hold of the rein attached to his horns.
"Hey, Corwin, aren't you forgetting something?" Korra asked with
a sly smile as Corwin prepared for takeoff.
"What?" he wondered. She wound up and tossed him an item that
jingled as he reflexively caught it - a small leather sack, which, when
opened, proved to contain a roll of paper money and a number of gold and
silver coins.
"For expenses," said Korra, winking. "Have a great time! See
you Monday!"
Corwin grinned, closed the purse again and tucked it away inside
his shirt, and replied, "Thanks. See you guys later!" Then, twitching
the reins, he declared, "Mogi! Yip yip!"
"Ghromph," Mogi replied agreeably. The bison gathered himself,
his great bulk seeming to coil like a spring, and then leaped into the
air with a mighty sweep of his broad, flat tail - and they were off, the
cheerful parting cries of their companions fading away behind them.
Korra waved until she was confident they wouldn't be able to see
her any more, then turned to the others and said, "OK! That's those two
out of our hair for a while. Who wants to try pinepear pie?"
Mogi swept out over Yue Bay, moving rather more swiftly than his
erstwhile billing as the laziest sky bison in the world might have
caused one to expect. This was Utena's first experience with flying on
something that didn't at least have seats, and she had expected to find
it a little more daunting than she did. There was such a reassuring
feeling of stability up here, though, between the sturdy construction of
the saddle and the muscular solidity of the animal himself, that she
found herself no less confident in her safety than she would've been on
the ground. She made her way forward until she was leaning over the
low-wall-like pommel at the front of the saddle, within arm's reach of
Corwin in the "pilot's seat".
"Not bad, eh?" Corwin asked, glancing back at her with a grin.
The evening was cool but not cold; the overall experience reminded Utena
of rushing down a freeway in an open car, but with virtually no noise
other than the whisper of Mogi's slipstream passing by them.
In front of them, the vista of Republic City lay spread out.
Night had fully fallen while Rohan, Korra, and the Acolytes had saddled
the bison, and the city blazed with light, its golden nightglow calling
that of New Avalon to mind. Beyond the skyline, a gibbous moon was just
rising, framed in one of the passes through the mountains that backed
the city. At this angle, it seemed huge, bigger than Cephiro's moon -
perhaps the size of Bajor in Jeraddo's night sky. Its silver light
seemed to highlight the city's golden glow rather than compete with it.
"Not bad," Utena agreed.
Corwin looked thoughtful for a second, then rezzed up his
quarian omni-tool and futzed with it for a few seconds. The tool's
holographic UI flicked to its much smaller passive mode as antique music
began issuing from nowhere evident:
/* Steppenwolf
"Magic Carpet Ride"
_Steppenwolf the Second_ (1968) */
I like to dream
Yes, yes, right between the sound machine
On a cloud of sound I drift in the night
Anyplace it goes is right
Goes far, flies near
To the stars, away from here
Well you don't know what we can find
Why don't you come with me, little girl
On a magic carpet ride
You don't know what we can see
Why don't you tell your dreams to me
Fantasy will set you free
Laughing, Utena climbed over the pommel of the saddle and down
onto Mogi's neck, such as it was. The animal's thick fur made for
purchase almost as secure as that of the saddle itself, and she had no
worries as she made her way down until she was hugging Corwin from
behind.
"I take back what I said a second ago," she murmured, her chin
on his shoulder. "It's not 'not bad'; it's amazing."
"It is that," said Corwin contentedly.
They were passing another island now, smaller than Air Temple
Island and featuring only a single building. This was a fairly low
structure, not that impressive in its own right, but atop it stood a
colossal statue of a young man in robes very similar to Rohan's,
striking a dramatic, forward-leaning pose with a staff in one hand.
"Cool statue," Utena observed. "Who is it?"
Corwin grinned. "That's Aang, one of Republic City's founders.
He's my second favorite Avatar - he was the one before Korra."
"You make it sound like you've met him," said Utena, amused.
"I have!" Corwin replied, and then, before she could pursue that
line further, "Hang on - have to do a little maneuvering to get into the
traffic pattern here."
Indeed, the airspace above the city itself, as opposed to out
over the bay, did seem to have regular traffic patterns, like those
followed by the airship and aircar traffic of New Avalon. No one seemed
to think it was all that strange that the pattern had just been joined
by a huge flying animal with two people aboard. People waved to them
from the windows of airship gondolas and took photos. For a few
seconds, they were paced by a long, black zeppelin with POLICE markings,
but the officers aboard apparently found no fault with their navigation,
because after a block or so it peeled off and went on its way uptown.
"That was some pretty serious-looking hardware," Utena observed.
"Cops in these parts don't fool around."
"No, no indeed," Corwin agreed.
"I wonder what that building by the waterfront is," she mused.
"The one that's all gold-colored. It looks like it might be a temple or
something."
Corwin didn't even have to look; there was only one place in
town she could mean. "That's Shiro Shinobi Arena. It's a temple, all
right - a temple of sport! Major League Bending, dangerball, I think
they even configured it for an Earth Rumble once. Remind me, we'll
check the sports page in the morning. I think it's the MLB off-season
right now, but they might be doing spring training or exhibition matches
or something. And even if they're not there's the Pro Bending Hall of
Fame."
They took a lap of the city, much as they had done of New
Avalon, first on the ground, and then in Corwin's own little zeppelin,
during that first Christmas vacation they had known each other. The
thought wasn't far from either one's mind as Corwin guided Mogi out of
the traffic pattern at the end of the lap and toward a downtown building
that was, though not one of the tallest skyscrapers in town, certainly
among the most arresting. There was something of the Gothic about its
architecture, which would have made it stand out against the rest of the
skyline even if it hadn't been clad in some highly polished bright red
stone, trimmed in gold, and brilliantly floodlit. Enormous golden
letters set into the building's facade at the top announced its name:
PHOENIX
HOUSE
HOTEL
Mogi landed in front of the canopied main entrance as if it were
a perfectly ordinary thing to be doing and grunted an amiable greeting
to the startled doorman. This worthy did his best, but even he - a
jaded veteran of everything one of the city's poshest hotels could throw
at a man - couldn't help but be taken aback by the arrival of two
strangely dressed foreigners who were definitely -not- Air Nomads on an
Air Nomad sky bison. One was a powerfully built young man who might've
been a Water Tribesman if not for his very fair skin, the other a tall,
slim young woman at whose ethnicity he could not even begin to guess.
He had never in his life seen anyone with pink hair before, and some
part of him refused to believe it was natural.
Corwin climbed back onto Mogi's saddle to retrieve their bags,
then let himself down the animal's side and went around to receive Utena
as she alighted from Mogi's head. Bright-eyed, she thanked Mogi for the
beautiful ride; Corwin grinned, added his own thanks, and then said,
"You'd better head back to the island, buddy. I don't think
they'll have anything here you want to eat. Don't worry, I'll be back
in a couple days." He rubbed the bison's nose affectionately. "Now
that I know what it means to you, I'm not going to run out on you
again."
"Ghrormph," Mogi replied; then he turned, gathered himself, and
launched into the sky, sailing away to the west and back out toward the
bay.
"Uhh," said the doorman. Then, seeming to recall his duty, he
opened one of the great brass-bound glass doors and bowed them inside,
saying, "Wah, wuh, welcome to the Phoenix House Hotel."
"Thank you," said Utena pleasantly. Corwin nodded to him, and
they went on through.
Inside, the lobby of the Phoenix House was done up in the sort
of style one would expect from looking at the outside of the building -
lots of golden and copper trim, red leather, and lashings of that black-
veined red stone. As Utena looked around, she noticed that there were
things that looked like exhibits and display cases scattered around the
vast, echoey space, as if in a museum. Pride of place in the center
went to a giant photograph that appeared to have been tinted by hand, a
full story high and spanning the full width of the lobby, that was
mounted up on the atrium wall above the reception desk. This depicted
eight people, three men and five women, seven of them in what looked
like old-fashioned hard-shell spacesuits and one (one of the women)
dressed in very smart, slightly archaic-looking business attire.
With a blink and a surprised sound, Utena realized that one of
the spacesuited women - holding her fishbowl helmet under her arm and
grinning a by-now-familiar jaunty grin - was Korra.
Corwin stopped next to her and looked up at the photo, smiling.
"The crew of the Phoenix Flight," he said. "I may have mentioned to
Korra at some point that you're an early-spaceflight buff... "
They went to the front desk, where the desk clerk - an
attractive young woman neatly attired all in shades of red, her dark
hair styled to frame her face - gave them the sort of look desk clerks
in fancy hotels give people who show up dressed the way Corwin and Utena
were dressed. Unlike the doorman, she didn't seem too interested in how
exotic they looked, but then not being too interested was, of course,
part of her job.
"May I help you?" she asked, sounding as though she suspected
the answer was probably no, but was willing to give it a shot.
Corwin took Korra's card from his pocket, placed it on the
counter, and slid it toward her with his fingertips, saying, "I believe
we have a reservation."
The clerk raised one immaculately trimmed eyebrow at him, her
amber eyes skeptical; then she looked at the card, blinked once, and so
perfectly retained her composure that Corwin felt an irrational urge to
kiss her.
"Of course," she said, as though that had been obvious all
along. Then, smiling fractionally (but fully - it reached her eyes),
she struck a brass callbell smartly and said, "Front!"
A bellman appeared with a bronze cart, upon which Corwin and
Utena's bags, once he'd placed them there, looked comically small.
Meanwhile, the clerk slid a large, brass-edged, leather-bound book
across the counter, along with an elaborate pen in an upright holder and
what appeared to be an extremely high-end version of the kind of inking
pad people used to use with rubber stamps.
Corwin smiled at her, took the pen, and signed the guest
register as neatly as he ever could. Then he handed the pen to Utena,
who outdid him easily, signing her name with a beautiful curlicued
flourish that put him in mind of ancient revolutionary documents. He
felt a little thrill as he noticed that she'd signed herself "Utena R.
Tenjou", something he'd never seen her do before.
"You're in the Avatar Suite, of course," said the clerk, a
little warmth edging into her voice now, as she took back the book and
implements, then presented Corwin with a large, ornate brass key and a
narrow white envelope. "Senjo will show you up. My name is Azana, and
if there's anything you need, please don't hesitate to dial zero and ask
for me." Then she really smiled, showing very white teeth, and added,
"Have a wonderful evening."
"Thank you," said Corwin with a smile of his own. He made a
gesture not unlike several others Utena had seen tonight, linking his
hands before his chest with the fingers interlocked and bowing slightly.
With a raised eyebrow, Azana replied with the firebender salute, and
Utena, slightly at a loss, bowed in the Nihonian style, arms at her
sides.
"She thawed out in a hurry," Utena murmured wryly to Corwin as
they followed Senjo to the elevator.
"Eh, Fire Nation girls," he replied casually. "They just need
to know you're not wasting their time."
"Do I want to know how you know that?" she asked as they entered
the lift.
"I'm a keen student of other cultures, you know that," said
Corwin. She looked like she might remonstrate with him, if only
jokingly, but with Senjo at the lever, the elevator was startlingly fast
for its evident vintage, and she was too busy being delighted by that to
bother as they shot up to what must've been near the top of the
building.
The short corridor at their destination had only one door,
directly opposite the gate of the lift. Senjo waited for Corwin to
unlock this, then bowed them through and followed them in with the
baggage cart, placed their bags within, and departed with a deep bow.
For a moment, once the lift gate had rattled shut and the
elevator departed with a mechanical whine, Corwin and Utena stood in the
middle of the Avatar Suite's sitting room, looking around. The room was
tastefully decorated in a very different style from the hotel's common
areas - mostly in much cooler hues, blues and creamy off-whites, with a
darker-blue-and-whiter-white sawtooth pattern on the walls, just above
head height, and dark wood paneling above, up to a coffered ceiling.
This, Corwin knew, was the style of the Southern Water Tribe,
Korra's native culture - her house in the South Pole settlement of Senna
looked much like it on the inside, or had when he'd last been there,
some eight years before. As he studied the room, though, he noticed
subtle accents hearkening to the other peoples of Diqiu. The planters,
for instance, had the cheerful solidity of the Earth Kingdom about them,
while the wrought iron light sconces on the walls owed their elegant
lines to the Fire Nation, and the elaborately decorated wood-framed
paper screen walling off the dining table and chairs in the corner from
the rest of the room was pure Air Nomad. Someone had put a lot of
thought and care into making the Avatar Suite reflect its namesake's
makeup: a proud daughter of the South Pole, but one connected to every
other nation and culture in the world.
Utena didn't have the background for any of this yet, though
Corwin knew that sometime in the next 48 hours, she would ask and he
would tell her. For now, she just looked around, taking it all in on
its own merits.
"This is amazing," she said.
"Yes it is," Corwin agreed.
"What's in the envelope she gave you?" Utena asked. Then, as he
tore the end flap open, she smirked and added, "Probably her phone
number."
"I already know her phone number, it's zero," he replied,
earning a light punch in the arm. "Let's see here. Hmm." The envelope
proved to contain three objects, a small note and a pair of items that
had the appearance of visiting cards. Corwin read the note, then handed
it to Utena while he examined the two cards.
Guys -
I took the liberty of arranging dinner for you tomorrow night. Don't
worry, after that the "suggestions" stop. You're completely on your own
for Sunday! (happy face) It's a little bit of a poodlepony show, but I
promise it'll be totally worth it.
See you Monday!
Lots of love,
KORRA
"Hmm," said Utena, intrigued. She looked at the cards in
Corwin's hands; both were covered in tiny, crisp Tongyu characters whose
meaning Utena could only guess at.
"What are they?" she wondered.
"This one," said Corwin, holding up the one with writing on only
one side, "is a reservation card for the fanciest restaurant in the
city, where we are expected at 7:30 tomorrow evening. And -this- one,"
he went on, holding up the one with black writing on one side and an
elaborate red seal-like marking on the other, "recommends that we
present ourselves at Ming and Daughters, Clothiers no later than five
o'clock, so that we'll be properly dressed for the occasion."
"Wow, a restaurant with a -dress code,-" said Utena. "We
haven't done that in a while."
"Nope," Corwin agreed, placing the cards carefully in the top
pocket of his black-and-grey-checked wool jacket. "Think we'll be able
to pass?"
"Of course not," Utena replied, grinning. "That's half the
fun." Giving him a kiss, she picked up their bags and carried them into
what she guessed, correctly, was the bedroom. This was done in the same
style as the sitting room, with a bedspread on the king-size bed that
put her in mind of the dress Korra had worn at the wedding, deep royal
blue trimmed in white fur. Smiling, she put the bags down in the
closet, kicked off her shoes, and padded back out to the sitting room in
her stocking feet to find Corwin sitting on the sofa, thumbing through a
large book.
"Whatcha got there?" she asked, sitting down beside him and
pulling her feet up.
"Complimentary coffee table book," he said, handing it to her.
It was a big, heavy volume with pages of glossy paper, the kind of book
that would be full of crisply reproduced photos. That was good, since
the text appeared to be in Chinese, which she couldn't read. "It's a
history of Project Phoenix Flight, the historical event this hotel is
named after. It was basically Diqiu's equivalent of Project Apollo on
Earth - the first trip by people from Diqiu to their moon."
Utena's eyebrows went up. "Fantastic," she said. "I don't
supposed there's a Standard edition. Or a Klingonese one," she added
wryly.
"I'm not sure, but if not, I can hit the highlights for you.
Right now, though, what I was actually looking for was this," Corwin
added, picking up the -other- large book from the low table in front of
the couch. He opened it to reveal a page covered in mixed Chinese and
Standard: part of the hotel's room service menu.
"Aha," said Utena, her eyes twinkling. "Good call. History
will have to wait." She put the glossy book back on the table and
snuggled up against him to peruse the menu.
"No idea what most of this stuff is," she mused. "That must be
the cocktails. Cactus juice?"
Corwin snorted. "Best saved for another time, I think," he
said. "I was thinking that if we're at the Phoenix House, we should try
the Phoenix House stir fry. It's one of those signature hotel dishes in
Diqiu, like potatoes Imperial or Parker House rolls back home. I've had
it before, but never actually -at- the Phoenix House."
"Sounds like a plan," said Utena. She picked up the phone,
which was on the table at her end of the sofa, and handed the handset to
him, then dialed 0 and waited while he had a very pleasant conversation
with first Azana, then the kitchen staff.
A startlingly short time later, their meal arrived. The crisply
uniformed pair who delivered it, a young man and woman who looked like
they might be siblings, not only brought it into the room, but served it
on the table in the corner, departing only when they were absolutely
certain that everything had been prepared and presented to the honored
guests' satisfaction. Like Senjo, they then left with deep bows,
neither expecting nor awaiting a gratuity.
Utena and Corwin dined as if at a fancy restaurant, which was a
curious feeling in stocking feet, cargo shorts, and partially unbuttoned
(only partially, for the service had been -very- fast) baseball jerseys.
The food was fantastic, spicy without brutality, and the wine - which
they hadn't ordered, and which had simply appeared with the staff's
felicitations - superb.
With the meal finished and the dishes, stacked neatly back on
the tray, placed out in the hall, they found themselves once again
standing in the middle of the sitting room, looking around at the
calming and tasteful decor of the Avatar Suite.
Then Corwin said, "I'm about to do something horribly old-
fashioned and patriarchal. I hope you can find it in your heart to
forgive me."
"Excuse me?" said Utena, and then he'd swept her up in his arms
and carried her into the bedroom. Once there, he set her back on her
feet again and stood smiling boyishly at her. She put her fists on her
hips and tried to look severe, but it just wasn't happening.
Then she came to his arms, or he came to hers, and they didn't
do much more thinking about the decor that night.
Back on Air Temple Island, having seen Mogi returned to the
bison caves, packed everyone else off to bed, and finished up her
evening practice, Korra sat on the ridgepole of the White Lotus sentry
station, from which the guardsmen maintained their vigil over the
eastern approaches to the island. This had long been one of her
favorite spots to sit and think in the evening; the place where she sat
had been worn smooth over the years by the seats of who knew how many
pairs of her trousers. The view of Republic City from up here was
unparallelled from anywhere other than the top of the Air Temple itself.
Deliciously, happily tired after two long days and she didn't
even want to calculate the time changes, Korra smiled fondly and made
the Water Tribe salute in the general direction of the Phoenix House's
shining red tower, then turned, walked to the far end of the ridgepole,
sprang lightly down to the ground, and headed for bed.
SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 2410
Morning found Kaitlyn, Juniper, and Serge in the paved martial-
arts practice area near where they'd first arrived in Diqiu the night
before. Serge was lounging by the edge, watching with the air of a not-
very-interested observer as his mistress and her student performed kata
with blunt weapons (bokuto for Anne, sheathed zatoichi for Kate).
Unnoticed, or at least unacknowledged, by either woman, a small crowd of
young airbenders and Air Acolytes had gathered around the tiger to watch
them work along with him.
Presently, they paused, bowed to each other, and put up their
weapons as Korra joined them, alighting from an airbender glider like
Rohan had used and collapsing it into a staff as she landed.
"Good morning, you two," she said cheerfully.
"Good morning, Korra," said Kate. "We missed you at breakfast."
Korra chuckled, shouldering her glider staff. "I got kind of a
late start, and then I had to go into town and take care of a few
things. Here," she said, rummaging in an inside pocket of her blue
leather jacket. "Here's all the stuff you'll need. This is a letter of
introduction to the headmaster of the firebending academy," she said,
handing Anne a letter sealed with an old-fashioned adhesive wafer. "I
also got you a map and a couple of Badgermole cards," Korra went on,
giving Kate a rolled-up document and a small waxed-pasteboard card, the
latter decorated with a gaily colored cartoon image of the eponymous
animal. "For the subway," she explained to Anne's curious look. She
held up the other card, then handed it over. "Cheaper than taking a
taxi everywhere. I suppose you could ride Sergei, but I don't think
he's anywhere near big enough."
"Hrumph," said Serge, eyeing the Avatar dubiously.
"I kid, I kid!" said Korra, crossing to give him a scritching.
"Say, why are you guys all hanging around here?" she asked the small
group of youngsters gathered around him.
The kids all glanced at each other, silently selecting a
spokesman through a combination of eye gestures and subtle jostling,
until finally one of the airbenders among them, a boy of around 13,
spoke up.
"The sword ladies are using our ba gua circle," he said
diffidently.
"Oh!" said Kate, crossing the ring to stand by Korra. "Sorry,
why didn't you say something? There was no one out here when we
finished breakfast, so I'm afraid we sort of... h-helped ourselves."
"Oh, it's no problem," said the boy, evidently warming to her
friendly demeanor. "Master Meelo hasn't shown up anyway. He's probably
sleeping in again."
Korra looked thoughtful. "I wouldn't be so... " She trailed
off, cocking her head as if listening for something. Then, suddenly
galvanized into action, she spun so that her back was to the children
and shouted, "INCOMING!"
Several objects were indeed coming their way, lofting down from
the upper levels of the Air Temple's tower. Kaitlyn automatically
stepped into formation with Korra, her blade singing from its wooden
cover (out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the boy and a couple of
the other youngsters goggling at it). Anne slung her bokuto, figuring
that whatever these objects were, she was probably better equipped to
deal with them empty-handed.
Her jaw set in a look of fierce determination, Korra took a step
forward and whirled her staff before her like a rotorblade, intercepting
all four of the incoming objects at once. They instantly disintegrated,
creating a great spray of multicolored semi-liquid that flew outward in
a broad arc to either side, covering the ground in a wide stripe. Some
of it carried on through the disc of the spinning staff. Most of this
fairly comprehensively splattered Korra; a bit sprayed off to the sides,
flecking Kate and a couple of the children.
Putting her sword away, Kate sniffed thoughtfully at a blob of
the stuff on her hand, then licked it off, considered, and said, "Hm.
Orangeberry!" A moment later a squadron of flying lemurs arrived,
descending upon the distributed pie filling like cleanup crews on an oil
spill (though Anne noticed they gave Serge, who was also taking an
interest in the patch nearest him, a wide berth).
/* Sue Keller
"Maple Leaf Rag (Scott Joplin, 1899)"
_Ol' Muddy: Riverboat Ragtime-Era Piano Sounds_ (2003) */
Korra blinked through the mask of pie filling covering her face
and said pleasantly, "Would you excuse me for a second? I have to go
threaten a sweet old man with bodily harm. Back in a jiffy. Gyatso,
hold this." So saying, she handed her (slightly sticky) staff to the
boy who had spoken for the others; shaped what appeared to be a large
ball of whirling, compressed air with her hands; and jumped on top of it
as it sped away toward the tower. Exeunt, pursued by lemurs.
Whoever was up there apparently still had some ammo, but Korra
was really motoring now and wouldn't be put off by a mere bombardment of
pastry. She went straight up the side of the tower, avoiding a couple
of pies and blasting others to flavorful clouds before they could reach
her, then sprang up onto a high balcony and disappeared inside. She
emerged a few moments later with a skinny figure in the robes of a
master airbender at her side, jumped down from the balcony, and broke
their fall with a blast of air and a neatly lifted slab of pavement.
This became stairs for them to walk down to ground level, then collapsed
back to its normal elevation behind them as they walked over to the ba
gua circle.
"Eh, unhand me, young lady!" the airbender - bald like Rohan,
whom he rather resembled, but sporting a white goatee instead of
a grey mustache - grumbled as Korra walked him over to the group, a hand
on the scruff of his neck. "You need to learn to respect your elders."
Korra sighed, rolling her eyes. "Meelo... "
"Fine, fine. I suppose it's time for our morning lessons
anyway, isn't it, children?" he inquired. Straightening his robes
ostentatiously as Korra released him, he added with a bland smile,
"Korra, dear, you've got a little fruit on you."
Korra eyed him narrowly; then, with a sudden percussive gust of
wind, all the fruit that had been on her was on him.
"Not any more," Korra deadpanned.
The old man laughed uproariously for a few seconds, then
subsided, wiping tears (and pie filling) from his eyes, and declared,
"Well played, my love, well played! We'll call this round a draw, shall
we?" Then, turning to Kate and Anne, he smiled brightly and said, "And
you must be our guests, or, well, two of them." He made the airbender
salute to them and went on, "I am Master Meelo - Meelo the Ancient, the
youngsters call me when they think I can't hear them." (To the side,
Gyatso blushed and looked unconvincingly nonchalant.) "Charmed. You
are a very beautiful young woman and it's not weird of me to say so."
Leaving Kate and Anne to ponder that - they weren't even sure which of
them he'd been addressing - he clapped his hands briskly and shouted,
"LEMURS! TO ME! Cleanup on Master Meelo!"
Obediently, lemurs arrived and began removing the pulverized
fruit from the aged master. Korra bade him an exaggeratedly civil
farewell that didn't quite cover a half-smile, took her staff back from
Gyatso, and led the two samurai and tiger away from the ba gua circle.
"... so that was Meelo... " she said tiredly.
"What an interesting fellow," said Kate diplomatically.
TENJOU ACADEMY, CEPHIRO
By noon, the campus of Tenjou Academy was back to something like
normal. Most of the visitors who had come for Corwin and Utena's
wedding had gone back whence they came sometime in the morning, the crew
of students detailed for cleanup and restoration of the school's normal
settings had long since completed their work, and the only major
remaining trace of the festivities was the giant hot tub in the middle
of the Quad. This, its creator having left the world without being
asked to return the area to its original state, looked like being a
permanent feature after all.
Nall Silverclaw roamed the deserted corridors of East Hall,
checking to see if there was anyone from the Midgard Duelist contingent
still at large. Most, he knew, had gone back with the Rune Knights as
guides, earlier in the morning, while he'd still been in bed. There was
always the possibility that a few others had opted to go back to sleep
rather than heed the early wakeup call, knowing that he was still around
to take them back later on.
And, indeed, there were. Nall found his two stragglers in the
common room, watching the last of the Avalon 17 Saturday-morning
cartoons on the giant holoset. They were a couple of the new generation
from Jeraddo, the tall Scottish girl and her English boyfriend, who
between them had kicked a lot of Earthforce ass and earned a lot of
Duelist cred on Tau Ceti. Having seen the way they handled that
crazyfest without batting an eye, Nall figured they'd be well up for his
little errand, and anyone who would bother figuring out how to work
Corwin's interdimensional pirate cable TV receiver just to watch My
Little Destroid had to be decent company.
"Hey, guys," he said from the doorway.
"Oh, hey, Nall," said Rory Williams from the depths of the
center couch.
"Are you guys it?" Nall wondered.
"Yeah, everybody else headed back this morning," Amy Pond
confirmed from even deeper in the couch.
Nall moseyed into the room and made himself at home in one of
the armchairs to watch the rest of the show. At noon, the cartoons gave
way to the 12 o'clock news. Amy surfed the channels for a while, found
nothing of interest, and gave up in disgust, switching the set off.
"Well, whadya say, guy?" she asked, thumping Rory lightly on the
leg. "S'pose we ought to get a move on ourselves."
"You guys have any special plans for the week?" asked Nall.
"Not really," said Rory. "Why?"
"Well," Nall said, "I've got this errand to run for my boy
Corwin. Got to deliver a mysterious package to a far-off foreign land."
He grinned. "I thought maybe you guys might want a piece of that
action."
Amy and Rory looked at each other speculatively, then got to
their feet.
"Sounds better than going back to Jeraddo and taking an eight-
day nap," Amy quipped.
"Great!" said Nall, rising. "Be good to have the company.
It'll be a long train ride, but the view's nice."
Rory put up a hand in the hang-on-a-second gesture. "We're
going someplace you have to go by -train?- From here?"
"Well, no, not from -here,-" Nall admitted. "We'll take the
Rose Gate from here to Saikyo on Zipang, and from -there- we take the
train - "
Amy's green eyes went wide. "To Diqiu!" she blurted.
Nall raised an eyebrow at her. "... You guys know about Diqiu?"
"Uh... yeah," said Amy hesitantly. "We went there. Once."
"Long time ago," Rory put in.
Amy nodded. "Yeah. -Long- time."
Nall thought that over for a second - Amy and Rory were
sophomores in high school, what constituted a long time for them? - then
said, "Huh. Interesting. You speak Tongyu?"
"He does," said Amy, tilting her head at Rory.
"Sort of," Rory qualified.
"I just speak Standard more slowly," Amy added.
"And louder," supplied Rory, earning himself an elbow in the
ribs.
"Huh," Nall repeated. "Well, OK. Actually you should be good
to go with Standard there these days. Go grab your gear and meet me at
Utena and Anthy's room. I've got to collect the mysterious package."
As they were leaving the common room, he remarked, "I hope I still have
admin access to the elevator. I do -not- wanna lug that thing up all
those stairs."
PHOENIX HOUSE HOTEL
REPUBLIC CITY, DIQIU
When Corwin and Utena returned to the Phoenix House's lobby a
bit before eleven, lightly breakfasted, scrubbed, refreshed, and ready
to tackle the day, they found a different clerk at the front desk. The
day clerk was a middle-aged fellow with slicked-back hair, fully as
polite as his night-shift colleague, though without the underlying
friendliness Azana had shown once she'd (pardon the pun) warmed to
Corwin. While Utena took herself off to examine some of the artifacts
on display in the museum-like lobby, Corwin went to the desk to hand in
their key to the Avatar Suite. This was, if he recalled correctly, the
done thing when leaving a Grand Hotel, even when not checking out.
"Thank you, sir," said the clerk. "I trust your evening was
satisfactory in every way?"
Corwin suppressed a giggle and replied, "Yes indeed, thank you."
The clerk nodded and replied blandly, "Excellent." Then,
without missing a beat, he slid an envelope across the counter and said,
"A personage left this for you, sir."
Slightly surprised, Corwin said, "Uh? Hm. Thank you." Feeling
it would be somehow gauche to open it while standing there, he tucked
the (curiously heavy) envelope away in the inside pocket of his jacket,
then went to join Utena by a display case containing what appeared to be
a small, pointed crystal phial on a length of black cord.
"Before the next time we come here - and we are coming back,"
Utena said with a wry smile, "I've got to learn this language." She
gestured to the informative placard next to the case, which, like the
book on Project Phoenix Flight up in their suite, was written in
something very like Chinese.
"Oh! That reminds me," said Corwin, and he went back over to
the front desk.
"Yes? Something else I can help you with, sir?" asked the
clerk, looking up at his approach.
"There's a book about the Phoenix Flight upstairs," said Corwin.
"Yes, indeed," the clerk agreed. "Professor Sato's 'Challenging
the Cold Silence'. The definitive work on the subject. We're proud to
offer it to every guest who stays in the Avatar Suite."
"And a very impressive volume it is too," Corwin agreed, nodding
sagely and remarking to himself as he did so that this guy's demeanor
was contagious. "The trouble is, as you can probably tell, we're not
from these parts. I've been visiting Republic City since I was a child,
so I learned Tongyu many years ago, but I'm afraid my wife - " He
paused for an instant, marveling inwardly at that, then went on, " - is
a stranger to the dialect. Would you happen to know if there's a
Standard-language edition available?"
The clerk gave him an inscrutable look that might've been
sympathy for having a wife with such a tragic handicap as that, then
swept himself into an elegant bow, one mandarin-sleeved arm outswept,
the other folded across his middle. "But certainly, sir. One will
await you when you return to the hotel. Is there anything else you
require?"
Corwin considered asking him if he could get ahold of a black
Buzz Rickson's MA-1 pilot's jacket in Utena's size, but decided against
it. He almost certainly wouldn't get the joke, although - the Phoenix
House being the kind of place it was - he might just come up with the
jacket somewhere.
Now that he thought about it, though, she would look good in
one...
He jotted a mental note, said no thanks, that should do it for
now, and went back to Utena.
"They're going to rustle us up a Standard copy of that book," he
said to her questioning glance.
"Oh, thanks," she said. "So... I'm not going to stand here and
expect you to read me every placard in this place - "
"I wouldn't mind," he put in.
" - thank you, but what's this item here?"
Corwin knew already, but so as to present the proper tone, he
translated the text on the placard: "'Avatar Korra used this amulet to
carry water from the Spirit Oasis of the North to Yue' - that's what
they call the moon here - 'as an offering to the Moon Spirit.'"
Utena smiled. "That's really sweet," she said. Then, taking
his arm, she added, "She's very thoughtful, your imaginary friend."
Corwin chuckled. "She is that," he agreed as they left the
hotel.
Behind them, unnoticed, the desk man watched them go, then
crouched behind the front desk, took up the handset of one of the
several telephones installed on a shelf beneath the counter, dialed, and
waited.
"Em?" he said in a hushed voice when his party answered, cupping
his hand around the mouthpiece. "It's Jiang. They just left. No, they
didn't mention where they were going. They're foreigners honeymooning
in Republic City, use your imagination. No. No, I don't think you'll
have any trouble picking up their trail. They're quite... memorable.
Right. Fine. You owe me for this, little sister."
Frowning, he hung up, then straightened to find the day-shift
elevator man eyeing him suspiciously from his station by the cage.
Scowling, Jiang barked at him, "What are you staring at? Get back to
work!"
At the curb outside, just beyond the area in front of the doors
that was reserved for arriving and departing guests, stood a vehicle
that caused Utena and Corwin to just stop and admire it, albeit for
different reasons. Utena was admiring it simply because it was
beautiful: a long-nosed, low-slung black four-seater roadster with a red
leather interior, its intricate bar-web grille and external exhaust
pipes glittering in polished chrome. The vehicle traffic on the streets
around them was normal-looking enough, maybe a little bit odd and
archaic in styling, but this vehicle seemed to have sprung from an
entirely different era, a time long before Earth made contact with the
rest of the galaxy.
"Nice car," she said. "I wonder whose it is."
"It's... " said Corwin. Then he walked around to the back of
the car and examined the license plate. "E2L 4J9. It is!" He pulled
the envelope the desk clerk had given him out of his pocket, tore off
the end, and tipped the contents into the palm of his hand: a gleaming
silver key on a keyring sporting the lightning-and-cog logo of Future
Industries. Stuffing the empty envelope in his side pocket, he grinned
and held up the key. "It's Korra's," he said.
"Ha!" said Utena. "What I was just saying." Then, before he
could react, she snatched the key from his hand and ran around to the
driver's side of the car, calling, "Too slow, -I'm- driving."
Corwin only smiled. "Fine, fine," he said casually, ambling to
the passenger door.
Utena jumped behind the steering wheel, then turned and eyed him
suspiciously as he climbed into the passenger seat. "You gave up on
that way too easily," she said.
Corwin shrugged. "Hey, you called it," he said. "I was too
slow." Gesturing to the wheel, he added graciously, "Carry on."
Utena kept the look on him for a moment longer, then gave a
satisfied "hmph" and turned to business - only to be confounded by the
car's controls. Oh, the wheel and the pedals were right about where she
expected them to be, and the handbrake, and there was another thing in
the center console that was obviously a gearshift lever and seemed, by
the gate at its base, to be worked in the usual fashion... but...
"Ah!" she said, spotting the keyhole on the instrument panel
next to the steering column. Triumphantly, she slotted it home, put in
the clutch, and turned it to the right.
Nothing happened.
"... hm. Is that - no... maybe - hmm." She kept hunting for a
few moments, then sighed, slumped a bit, and said without looking at
Corwin, "Fine. You win. Show me how you start it."
"You almost had it," Corwin assured her. "Starting one of these
old P-model Satomobiles is a little like cranking up an old-timey
airplane. There's a checklist." He consulted an imaginary clipboard.
"Ignition on."
Utena, her good humor restored by his treating it as a game,
looked at the position of the key. "Ignition on."
"Fuel pumps to AUTO."
A quick hunt turned up the appropriate knob. "Fuel pumps to...
AUTO."
"Magnetos to BOTH."
"Magnetos... magnetos... aha! Magnetos to BOTH."
"Spark advance to FULL."
Utena scanned the panel. "Spark advance... "
"That's that thing that looks like a turn signal lever, except
it's on the wrong side of the wheel," Corwin told her, since it wasn't
marked. "All the way forward."
"Aha. Spark advance... FULL."
"Gearshift in neutral."
Utena waggled the lever. "Neutral."
"Brake on."
"Brake on," Utena confirmed, giving the handbrake lever a little
tug for good measure.
"Good," said Corwin. "Now just press the red button."
She did so, and the car's engine immediately sprang to life,
firing up with the kind of rumble Utena associated with quite a large
number of horsepower. She grinned, flexing her fingers around the big,
cord-wrapped steering wheel.
"OK!" said Corwin. "Move the spark advance back to about
midway, just until the idle smooths out - you'll feel it when it's
right." She did so, finding the sweet spot without difficulty - he had
noticed long ago, when teaching her to drive, that she had a natural
affinity for this kind of thing. "From here on, it's pretty much like
you'd expect. Oh - first gear isn't synchronized, so you can only shift
into it when the car's stopped unless you double-clutch." He gestured
vaguely forward. "Let's do this thing!"
Utena did that thing. She took it gently at first, getting the
feel of the old car's very heavy clutch, but within minutes she was
handling it like an old friend.
Only then did it occur to her to ask, "So, uh... where are we
going?"
Elsewhere in the city, Kate and Anne arrived in front of a
building which the map indicated was the one they wanted. Anne
confirmed this by comparing the address on the front of the letter Korra
had given her to the markings on the discreet brass plaque next to the
door. She couldn't read them, and there was no Standard marking
anywhere on the building, but the characters did appear to match, so she
pressed the button for the doorbell and waited.
A few seconds later, the door opened and a man stepped out onto
the stoop. He was a tall, brawny middle-aged specimen in loose-fitting
red trousers, pointy shoes that put Anne in mind of cartoon Arabs, and a
black, red-belted tunic, his greying hair pulled back into a topknot
like something out of an old samurai movie. When he saw the two women
he just stood, arms folded, taking them in with a deeply unimpressed
glower.
he demanded in what, to Anne's faint
surprise, was basically Japanese.
Anne blinked. She'd picked up just enough Japanese (speaking,
not reading) on her two-year scrounge around the Rim to make out more or
less what he was saying, but it took her a moment to put enough
syllables together in her head to reply out loud. It occurred to her that she had no idea how you would say
"firebending" in Japanese. Or "academy", for that matter. she concluded a little lamely.
The man actually -sneered- at that, which got Anne's blood up a
little. She knew her word choices were clumsy at best and her accent
was probably atrocious, but still, there was surely no call for that.
he snapped. He started to close the door, then blinked in surprise as it
wouldn't move.
"I'm not a tourist," Anne snapped back, switching back to
Standard as annoyance muscled aside self-consciousness. "I want to
study firebending here." (I think,) she remarked dubiously to herself,
then added aloud, "Where is the headmaster?" (Please don't be him.)
the man replied.
"Deng!" a woman's voice called from behind him. "Are you being
an ass again?"
The man turned and directed a rapid-fire stream of what sounded
like Chinese back into the building; Anne couldn't follow this at all,
but from just the tone, it sounded distinctly like he was telling the
woman who'd addressed him to mind her own business.
This she did not do, instead pushing him out of the way and
emerging onto the stoop herself to take a look at the visitors. She was
much younger and prettier than the man, dressed in an outfit that looked
more like a judo gi (all in red), and she smiled pleasantly as she said
to Anne, "Hello! I'm Azana. This is Deng," she added, angling a thumb
at the now-very-grumpy-looking man behind her. "Ignore him. He used to
be a firebending instructor in the United Forces, and sometimes I'm not
sure his entire brain received the discharge notice. What's your name?"
"I'm, uh, I'm Anne. Anne Cross." Not sure quite what else to
do, she made the firebender salute, which, after a moment's surprised
hesitation, Azana returned.
"Nice to meet you, Anne. Did I hear you right? Did you say you
want to study here?"
Anne nodded. "Yes. Maybe. It depends." She stopped herself,
took a breath, and went on, "I want to study firebending -somewhere.-
Korra suggested I try here first."
Azana's eyebrows went up. "-Avatar- Korra? Well well! Yes, I
definitely think Master Ito will want to speak with you. Come this way.
Are you with her?" she asked Kaitlyn, who had remained down at street
level watching the whole scene unfold with a quiet little smile.
Now she climbed the steps to stand next to Anne and said, "Only
in an advisory capacity." She bowed and introduced herself, explaining
that Anne was her student in swordsmanship, but that she was not a
firebender herself.
"Well, come inside and meet Master Ito," said Azana. "We can
see if you're a good match to the school. Don't worry, we have
instructors other than Deng," she added with a grin as they all filed
past the scowling man into the foyer, where they placed their shoes into
cubbyholes ranked all along the wall for the purpose.
Beyond this room (spartan, but immaculate), they passed under an
arch and into a vast, high-ceilinged dojo, easily half again the size of
the dueling room back at the Duelists' Castle on Jeraddo. Here, even on
Saturday, there were at least two dozen people dressed in martial arts
garb (mostly red) practicing that kung-fu-like style Anne had seen Korra
doing when they'd first met, evening before last, on the plaza in front
of the White Tower at Tenjou Academy. A few of them were throwing fire
in the process; others were just going through the movements.
Instructors, recognizable in their black tunics, strolled here and
there, offering advice, criticism, and encouragement as the situation
warranted.
Anne paused just past the archway and stood marveling at the
room for a moment. It was bigger than the ballroom at Tenjou Academy,
possibly even bigger than the gym at Harkness Street High. You could
easily run two or even three parallel games of basketball in here. And
even with all these firebenders and their instructors at work, it was
such a clean, orderly, quiet space that she felt instantly at ease, the
apprehension conjured up by Deng's unfriendly reception wiped away.
Azana saw her reaction, smiled, and gestured to the wall above
the archway. Anne turned and saw that it was dominated by a large,
framed portrait of a stern-looking young man - black-haired and amber-
eyed, he might have been Azana's college-age brother - with a truly epic
burn scar around his somehow-intact left eye. Next to this, marching
down the full height of the wall, were the same Tongyu characters that
had adorned the small sign on the outside of the building.
"Welcome to the Fire Lord Zuko Firebending Academy," Azana said
cheerfully, and then, seeing Anne's reaction to the Fire Lord's slightly
fierce expression (rendered more so by that livid scar), "Don't worry,
his bark was a lot worse than his bite."
With that, she led Anne and Kate up the impromptu aisle in the
middle of the room, toward one of the teachers far at the back. This
was a portly, grey-haired gentleman, and though his clothing was no
more elaborate than any of the other instructors', he had such a natural
air of gravity and authority that Anne and Kate knew him immediately for
the academy's headmaster.
"Master Ito," said Azana, saluting him. "May I introduce a
prospective student?" With a twinkling grin and a wink of one amber eye
for Anne, she added, "She comes to us -very- highly recommended... "
Azana made introductions; at the appropriate moment, Anne handed
over the letter Korra had given her. Ito broke the seal, unfolded the
letter, and read it, his white eyebrows rising slightly; then he folded
it back up and tucked it away in his tunic, looking Anne up and down
with an intent but not unkindly gaze.
"Hmm," he remarked. "A swordswoman in training whom the Avatar
thinks will make a good firebender. It's not every day a person like
that comes to my humble school. You may consider me intrigued, young
lady. Of course," he added with a small grin, "there are protocols to
be followed." Then he turned to Kaitlyn. "You are this youngster's
sword master, though barely older than she is?" he asked, sounding not
sarcastic or skeptical, but rather intrigued.
"I am," Kaitlyn agreed.
"And you have no qualms about her studying another's arts before
she has fully mastered your own?"
"The essence of our school," Kate explained, "is synthesis. We
learn whatever we can, wherever it is offered, and apply it to our
search for a g-greater understanding of the sword and of ourselves.
Besides - Juni-chan has a natural gift which I, her teacher, lack. To
deny her the chance to study that gift would be to do her a great
disservice. I would no longer d-deserve to call myself her master."
Ito, who had begun smiling when she got to "a greater
understanding", laughed outright in response to that last part, a big,
genuine laugh that got the attention of several nearby students and
teachers.
"Very well said," he remarked. "You have great wisdom for one
so young. Come - I'm eager to test myself against your steel. It was
once the custom when masters of the fighting arts met, and I have always
been an old-fashioned sort of man."
Kaitlyn smiled slightly. "It would be my privilege, Ito-
sensei," she replied, "but alas, as I said, I am no f-firebender."
"So much the better," Ito replied cheerfully. "It'll make it
more interesting." Then, without waiting for her reply, he clapped his
hands briskly and declared in a voice that rang to the far corners of
the great dojo, "Gentlemen! Ladies! Make way, if you please. I have
business to attend to."
The students and instructors broke off what they were doing and
gathered in the corners of the room, chattering excitedly among
themselves, and Anne got the impression that they had seen their master
do this sort of thing before. Kaitlyn gave her a reassuring little
smile, handed over her jacket, and then went to the middle of the floor
and awaited Ito, zatoichi in hand.
The old master conferred briefly with Azana, who then conducted
Anne off to one side to watch. Then, still smiling, he went to a rack
along one wall and returned with a sword of his own - a broad-bladed,
vaguely falchion-like weapon called, if Anne's memory of various wuxia
movies served, a dao. He squared off against Kaitlyn in the middle of
the floor, holding the blade above his head, point toward her, with one
bent arm. Kaitlyn, in turn, thrust her zatoichi's wooden disguise
through her belt, drew the blade katana-fashion, and took up a neutral
ready stance, both hands on the grip.
His smile becoming slightly fierce, Ito performed a furious
flourish with his sword - at the end of which, he was holding -two-
swords, the weapon having divided into mirror halves in his hands at
some point during the maneuver. Thus equipped, he launched his assault.
/* Toshihiko Sahashi
"The Holy"
_The Big O_ Original Sound Score (2003) */
In the year she'd been with Kaitlyn, Anne Cross had seen her
sensei fight some seriously crazy fights. The very first one she'd seen
had been a Rose Duel with Utena, a friendly but full-throttle contest in
the back yard of their house on Tomodachi that had left Kate slightly
bloodied and a wooden footbridge in ruins. Since then there had been
many others, both friendly and not so much, from her show duel with her
father just the day before to a deadly-serious, life-or-death battle
with a rogue Psi Cop in the streets of Tau City.
This fight was not as emotionally draining to watch as that one,
because the stakes were visibly not as high, but it was nearly as
intense. Master Ito may have been a stout old man, but he had learned
to handle a dao somewhere, and even without bringing his firebending
skills into the mix, he was more than enough to keep Kaitlyn occupied.
She held her own, though, despite having only one sword to his two, and
a lighter blade than either.
Kate had to be tired, Anne realized. She'd had a decent night's
sleep after they arrived on Air Temple Island, but the day before had
been a long one indeed, one in which she'd put on an extensive swordplay
demonstration and then rock 'n rolled all night. Her stutter, normally
conquered these days, had returned (albeit very mildly), which was a
sure sign of fatigue. It showed too, if only slightly, as she fended
off Ito: only rarely was she able to take the initiative, come off the
defensive, and push the old man back in his turn. Even those rare
flashes seemed to be more than he was expecting, though, and the look of
delight underlying the concentration on his face deepened with each one.
Had it been a Rose Duel, he probably would have won, but it
would've been a near thing. Had it been a genuine battle, Anne couldn't
possibly have said who would've come out on top. As it was, though, Ito
wasn't really looking for victory or defeat. He simply wanted to know
if the young woman who had entered his academy and presented her student
to him was really worthy of the title she claimed for herself. Within
thirty seconds, he was convinced of that. The other ninety were just
because he was having such a good time.
Eventually, he called a halt, disengaging and returning his
swords to his back with a deep bow. Kaitlyn reversed her blade and
sheathed it smartly, then bowed to him in turn before removing the
zatoichi from her belt.
"Thank you for humoring an old man's whimsy, Master Kaitlyn,"
said Ito cheerfully. "It's been a long time since I crossed swords with
the likes of you. You remind me... " He shook his head. "Well, never
mind. I would be honored for your pupil's education to be furthered
within these walls."
"Thank you, Ito-sensei," said Kate with a slight smile. "The
honor is ours."
"Yes," said Anne as she joined them in the middle of the floor.
"Thank you. I'll do my best."
"Avatar Korra mentions in her letter that you're a foreigner -
not that I expect that would have avoided my notice without her help,"
the master said with a twinkling grin. "Do you intend to move to
Republic City? Have you a place to stay? We do board students here
from time to time. Some say the most immersive training is best."
"Well... " Anne considered her answer carefully. "I'm only in
the city for a few days right now, but I thought that if I found an
academy that would take me, and a teacher who could get somewhere with
me, I might come back and stay for the summer."
Ito frowned. For a moment Anne thought he might express
disapproval of her plan, and possibly of dilettantes in general, but it
was apparently just the expression he got when he was thinking, because
a second later he nodded and said, "Well, in that case... it appears
you've found the first item on your list. Now let's see about the
second."
Hands on hips, he scanned his establishment for a moment. Most
of the other instructors and students had gone back to work. Only Deng,
the burly, scowly man who'd answered the door, and Azana, the girl who'd
rescued Anne from him, weren't occupied; one was standing near the
entrance, arms folded, radiating disapproval, and the other was leaning
against the jamb of a doorway leading out of the dojo partway down one
of the sides walls, smiling.
Please don't say Deng, thought Anne. A moment later, Ito
beckoned to Azana, who levered herself away from the doorjamb and
crossed to them, offering the master a firebender salute as she arrived.
"Azana," said Ito conversationally, "do you remember our
discussion about your teaching career?"
Azana's smile became slightly indulgent. "I remember you
telling me I should have one," she said, more in a tone one would use
when speaking to a favorite but slightly dotty old relative than when
addressing one's sensei. "That didn't really qualify as a discussion,
however, since to be a -discussion- it would have had to involve me
speaking in turn at some point. If it had, you wouldn't be able to
pretend you don't know that's not where I see myself going."
"Well," Ito said, magnanimously ignoring her tone, "we now have
the potential for a compromise. Here is a young woman who isn't
entirely certain she wishes to study here. You are not entirely certain
you wish to teach. Why don't you find out together?"
Anne fidgeted a little, uncomfortable with the idea that someone
was being dragooned into instructing her who didn't want to be doing
that sort of thing at all, much less for a foreign dabbler. She
considered ways of backing away from the situation, but none struck her
as in any way graceful, after she - and Kate - had gone to so much
trouble to get this far.
Azana, however, took the matter out of her hands by giving her a
thoughtful look, then replying with a grin, "Sure, why don't we? Might
be fun."
AIR TEMPLE ISLAND
Anthy Tenjou slept late that day, and though the temple went
about its usual routine all around her, making no special provision for
dealing with late-rising guests, she was not disturbed by anyone. The
airbenders and their Acolytes were quiet and reflective sorts by nature,
and their morning activities were not of a sort that would tend to rouse
even a relatively light sleeper like Anthy. In fact, she woke to find
that someone had left a bowl of fruit on the table in her room - not an
easy task to accomplish without waking her.
She, too, wasn't really ready to face the world until nearly
eleven in the morning. Once she was prepared to her satisfaction, she
took a couple of items from the bowl of fruit - one appeared to be some
sort of peach, and she had no idea what the other was apart from
pleasant-smelling - and roamed the island a bit, using her staff as a
walking stick. Eventually, she found herself sitting on a bench within
sight of the spinning doors where Korra had brought her and the others
across from Cephiro. Here, an elderly man in the robes of an airbending
master was cheerfully guiding a couple of young pupils in the exercise
of avoiding the gates as they turned, a complicated and challenging task
which neither student had quite mastered yet.
While she sat watching and eating the peach-like item (which
tasted like one as well), a small, furry creature happened along. She'd
noticed several of these roaming the grounds while she'd been out
exploring; some sort of lemur, it appeared, mostly white with black
points, a little like a Siamese cat. Unlike the others, which had paid
her little mind as they went about their business, this one came right
over and jumped up onto the bench next to her, regarding her
thoughtfully with large golden eyes.
"Hello," said Anthy, smiling.
"Rrktpk?" the lemur replied.
"Would you like a whatever-this-is?" Anthy asked, offering the
creature the mystery fruit. It appeared that he would, if the speed
with which he took and scarfed down the fruit was any indication. Then,
evidently satisfied with this gesture, he scrambled up her sleeve to
perch on her shoulder, in a position not unlike that often assumed by
Nall. She reached up and petted him absently, returning her attention
to the airbenders at work.
A few minutes later, another young airbender arrived. This one
was a teenage girl, thin and unfinished-looking in that way that some
teenagers are. She was perched in a sort of baseball-catcher stance
atop a basketball-sized sphere of whirling air, off of which she sprang
as she arrived. The air scooter dissipated with a gentle "pop!" as its
erstwhile rider alighted next to the bench where Anthy sat, feet
together, arms outstretched, like a gymnast dismounting from an
apparatus. Standing, she was quite tall for her apparent age, which
Anthy would have put somewhere in her mid-teens.
Apart from her unusual height and slenderness, which made her
limbs seem even more spindly than they really were, the most striking
thing about her was her hair. She barely had any, as though she'd
shaved her head a month or so before, then thought better of it. The
full length of the arrow tattoo on her head could still be seen through
the faint dark fuzz that was beginning to grow back, all the way to the
nape of her neck, where it disappeared into the collar of her yellow
shirt. Her rolled-up sleeves revealed similar arrows on both arms,
ending on the backs of her hands.
"Greetings, Lady Anthy!" she said cheerfully, bowing with a
grace that, like the nimbleness of her dismount from the air scooter,
was a bit at odds with the gawkiness of her appearance. "Master Jinora
sends her compliments and asks that you lunch with her in her chambers,
if it's convenient."
Anthy smiled slightly and got to her feet. Her newly acquired
lemur friend remained at his post, taking a turn of his tail around her
neck for stability.
"It would be my pleasure. Please, lead on."
"Right this way," said the girl, and they set off for the
temple. "I'm Nyima, by the way. It's an honor to meet you."
"I'm pleased to meet you too, Nyima," said Anthy. "Are you one
of the students here?"
Nyima's cheeks went slightly red. "Um... well, not any more, I
guess," she said. Pointing to the tattoo on her head, she went on, "I
got my arrow a few weeks ago. It's the last tattoo we Air Nomads get -
you have to be a master airbender to earn it. So I guess I'm not really
a student any more, but I haven't figured out what I'm going to do next
yet... " She shrugged.
"You seem very young to have achieved so much," Anthy mused.
She sounded not skeptical, which Nyima might have expected, but rather
pleased on her behalf.
"I'm sixteen," Nyima said. "And a half. Not the youngest
master ever, by a long shot - Aang the Elder was -twelve-, but then, he
was the Avatar - but, yeah... they say I'm kind of a prodigy." She
shrugged again. "I guess it's karma's way of paying me back for making
me ugly."
"You're not ugly," Anthy objected.
"You're very kind, Lady Anthy, but please," said Nyima wryly.
"I'm a stick figure. All knees and elbows. Nothing going on -here,-"
she said, smoothing her airbender's tunic over what Anthy had to concede
was not much of a chest, "nothing going on -here,-" and she did a
similar thing with her trousers at her very slim hips, "too much jaw,
too much nose." Another shrug. "You don't have to pretend. I know I'm
not much to look at. My sister's the pretty one in our generation." A
little smirk touched her face then. "But I'm better at airball!"
"You're very graceful," Anthy persisted as they entered the
front hall of the Air Temple. "You have a beautiful way of moving. And
for what little it's worth, I don't think you're right about your face,
either." She smiled. "And you have an open, honest heart. I promise
you, many people find that very attractive."
"I have -no inside voice- is what I have," Nyima said, blushing
again. "I'm sorry I just blurted all that out like that. And I really
appreciate you trying to make me feel better. But I know where I stand.
When you meet Lhakpa, you'll understand." They reached the door at the
end of the hall, and before Anthy could say anything further, Nyima
rapped smartly on the jamb with the knuckles of her right hand and said,
"Master Jinora? Your guest is here."
A sudden breeze blew open the sliding door, revealing a sparsely
but handsomely appointed sitting room. At a square table off to one
side sat another woman in airbender garb. She was white-haired but very
upright, the blue of her master's arrow peeking out from behind bangs
neatly parted on the right.
"Thank you, Master Nyima," said Jinora. Rising smoothly,
lightly to her feet, she made the air salute and bowed to Anthy, who
returned the bow as best she could. "Lady Anthy. Welcome. Thank you
for accepting my invitation. I apologize for the short notice, but by
the time you arrived on the island last night, I had already retired."
She gestured to a cushion on the floor opposite the table from her own.
"Please, take a seat. I can have a chair brought for you if you would
be more comfortable... "
"Not at all," Anthy assured her, stepping into the room. "This
is fine."
"I'll leave you to it, then," said Nyima, just a trifle
awkwardly. "It was nice meeting you, Lady Anthy."
"And you, Master Nyima," Anthy replied, with another short bow.
As the young airbender closed the door between them, she reflected that
this was not the time to insist that titles were unnecessary between
friends, but that that time would come. Then, returning her attention
to the matter at hand, she stood Rosenjäger in the corner, went to the
table, and seated herself carefully, but without evident difficulty or
discomfort, opposite her hostess.
This close, Anthy could see that Jinora was older than she
seemed at first glance. Her very erect carriage and the ease with which
she moved gave her an impression of youth, but at this range, her
features were a bit weathered, with deep lines at the corners of her
eyes and a distinct furrow in between them, the mark of a life spent
concentrating on one thing or another. Still, she was a handsome woman,
and Anthy would have been hard-pressed to say whether she was in her
early sixties or twice that - if, she reminded herself, people could
expect a similar sort of lifespan here as they could back in places like
New Avalon.
Jinora seated herself opposite Anthy, in the space where she'd
been sitting when her guest arrived. Their conversation was light and
pleasant, but entirely superficial, while a couple of Air Acolytes
served them an unpretentious but excellent vegetarian lunch. No one saw
fit to remark on the lemur Anthy still bore on her shoulder, which
abstracted occasional bits of her lunch as they ate and chatted, the
very picture of two women getting politely acquainted over a shared
meal.
Not until the tablecloth was drawn, the tea and fruit was
served, and the Acolytes withdrew did Jinora speak of anything more
consequential than the weather and her hopes that Anthy was finding Air
Temple Island a pleasant sanctuary from the cares of the world, as it
was meant to be.
Then, still politely, but with a penetrating look in her brown
eyes that had been absent before, she said, "Please, Lady Anthy, tell me
something of yourself. Corwin has never been a mystery to me - I rather
doubt he has it in him to be a mystery to anyone," she added wryly, "and
I have the distinct impression that his other lady is much the same
sort, but you... you're something different. You're an enigma. A
puzzle." Jinora smiled slightly. "I like puzzles, but sometimes I need
a little help getting started."
Anthy met the smile and inclined her head graciously. "I'm not
so very mysterious either," she insisted. "In my youth I made a very
great mistake, and I spent a long time thereafter trying to make amends
for it. Of late, I feel I've succeeded in that, and now I'm getting on
with the rest of my life."
"Admirable," said Jinora. "Many never find the strength to move
beyond that way."
"I didn't find mine without help," Anthy told her. "But let's
leave all this aside for the moment. I know what you really want to
know. You wonder why I'm here - not existentially but practically,
because you're a practical woman. You want to know how a woman who is
not Corwin's wife came to be carrying his child."
Jinora's little smile widened slightly. "I don't need the
technical details. My own childbearing years are far behind me, it's
true, but I still remember more or less how the process worked," she
said, a trifle archly. "But yes, it had occurred to me to wonder.
Korra's correspondence with Corwin - what she's shared of it with me -
has provided a few clues, and the Order of the White Lotus has...
certain resources for information... but there are many gaps. I was
hoping you'd be so kind as to fill a few of them in for me before I meet
with all three of you on Monday."
Anthy chuckled. "Well... for that, you'll require some
background information. You'll have to bear with me, because the old
figure of speech about something being a long story is more than usually
true in this case."
Jinora listened quietly and attentively as Anthy explained, in
rough strokes, the complicated metaphysical situation that had brought
her and Utena Tenjou together, and how Corwin had - for the most part
unwittingly, which brought a knowing smile to the elderly airbender's
face - barged into the middle of it and changed the game completely.
The result had left the three of them bound together by mystic ties they
were still only beginning to understand - and by ties of love,
affection, and respect that they flattered themselves they had a
reasonably good handle on by now.
"So... there we are," said Anthy, spreading her hands. "One day
I hope to make them both my husbands, in the eyes of Zeta Cygni's laws
at least, as they already are in all our hearts. For now, Corwin's the
father of my child, and the man who reforged my prince's broken heart
and made it possible for her to save us all. He's the dearest, kindest,
bravest man I've ever known, who will go to any length to keep a promise
and dare anything for love. And sometimes," she added in precisely the
same cheerful, loving tone of voice, "he's quite the most frustratingly
clueless little boy in the universe."
Jinora outright -laughed- at that, head back, her bangs falling
aside to reveal more of her arrow.
"He is, isn't he?" she said merrily. "He has been all those
things since he was but a child. And he has -long- been a kind, gentle,
entirely unwitting thief and breaker of hearts. Maki of Kyoshi
Island... my great-granddaughter Nyima, whom you met... half a dozen of
the younger Air Acolytes, not all of them girls... even, -ridiculously,-
my sister Ikki, who is nearly as ancient as I. When he was last here,
a mere boy of 13, he conquered them all - a feat of which I suspect he
is still ignorant."
Anthy smiled. "No longer in Maki's case, I think."
"Hm," said Jinora with an arched eyebrow. "Progress. Still,
one does occasionally wish he would turn it -off.-" She sighed. "But
that would require him to know he's doing it, and then he wouldn't be
Corwin."
"Indeed," Anthy agreed solemnly. "At any rate, Master Jinora,
that is what Corwin is to me. As for what I am to him... " She
shrugged. "It's a cliché, I suppose, but I like to think that I'm his
partner in life, his and Utena's both. Obviously, they had something of
a head start on me as regards the... " She made a vague gesture. "...
the two-fisted how-much-fun-ness... "
Jinora nodded, smiling again. "Around here, we sometimes
jokingly call it the Avatar State. Not all Avatars are like that, by
any means, but Korra is the only one any of us has ever known."
"Exactly," said Anthy, nodding in return; then she picked up the
thread and said, "But I've worked hard to catch up. A very dear friend
of mine - Corwin's favorite aunt, in fact - once told me that when she
met her future husband, they had to decide which kind of couple they
would be: the kind who hover supportively on the peripheries of each
other's lives, or the kind who fuse them into a single whole and
tackle them head-on, side by side. They chose the latter and neither
has ever had cause to regret it." She chuckled wryly. "It's more
complicated for the three of us, obviously - probably by a factor of
nine, not three. As I told Korra yesterday, we're a work in progress -
like all great artworks," she added, smiling.
"Hmm," said Jinora thoughtfully. "Thank you for telling me
that," she said after a moment's reflection. "It's an amazing story. I
feel privileged to have heard it."
"You're welcome," said Anthy. "Thank you for listening. Oh -
and there's one more thing I am that you should be aware of."
"Which is?" Jinora wondered, intrigued.
"Among other things," said Anthy carefully, "I am High Priestess
to Corwin, in his capacity as the Pillar of Cephiro. Part of my duty in
that office is to -protect- the Pillar."
"From what?" asked Jinora.
"Anything," Anthy replied flatly, her voice becoming ever so
slightly cold - not hostile, not even particularly aggressive, but with
a distinct and undeniable edge. "Those who would do him harm. By fire,
by sword, by stealth... " She sipped her tea, put the cup down, and
went on calmly, "... by conspiring to deprive him of old and cherished
friendships."
Jinora met Anthy's green eyes with her brown ones, regarding her
in silence for several seconds; then she smiled.
"Good," she said. "He's needed someone like that in his life
for a long time. I'm glad to see someone finally stepping to the
centerline. I think you and I will be friends." She gestured to
another table in the center of the room, this one slightly taller and
round, its surface broken up into multicolored areas. "Tell me, Lady
Anthy... do you enjoy games of strategy?"
SAIKYO, ZIPANG
ENIGMA SECTOR
When Corwin had asked him to run this little errand, Nall had
sarcastically remarked that he was sure no one would notice somebody
carrying a small but heavy chest of peculiar appearance through Saikyo
Central Terminal. He was momentarily annoyed now to discover that, in
fact, it appeared that nobody did. The station concourse was bustling,
as in Nall's experience it always was, but none of the various travelers
moving here and there with baggage and/or children in tow seemed to pay
him or his companions the slightest attention as they moved across the
floor. Nall was in the lead, because he had the money and knew the
secret code phrase. Amy and Rory followed behind with the chest between
them, each holding onto one of the iron handles bolted firmly to the
sides of the box.
"Good day to you, sir," said the ticket agent as Nall presented
himself at ticket window three. "How may I help you?"
Nall cleared his throat, looked significantly around to make
certain he wouldn't be overheard, and then leaned nearer to the window
and said portentously, "The Earth King has invited us to Bosco's
birthday party."
The agent didn't even bat an eye. He simply scrolled to a
submenu on his computer screen, entered a password, and replied
smoothly, "One expects His Majesty will be pleased to receive your
RSVP."
"One expects," Nall agreed, "though I'll have to go all the way
to the coast to mail it."
The clerk smiled very slightly. "Excellent. How many of you?"
"Three," said Nall.
"Third, second, or first class?"
"First. Sleeper berths, if you please."
"One-way or round trip?"
"One-way. Not sure how long we're staying."
The ticket agent nodded, entered some information, then
requested a quantity of currency, which he didn't seem surprised at all
to be paid in gold. He printed three tickets, separated them, stacked
them neatly in a little cardboard folder gaily printed with the colors
and logo of the Uehara and Saikyo Central Railroad, and slid them
through the little slot at the bottom of the window.
"There you are," he said. "Will you need assistance with your
luggage?"
"No, I think we've got it," Nall replied.
"Your train departs from Platform 17 in twenty minutes. Enjoy
your journey."
The train standing at Platform 17 was a diesel-electric
streamliner of the old school, gleaming in the handsome blue and silver
livery of the U&SC. Down its side, the name of the service it
represented was repeated on each carriage in Standard letters and
Zipangi katakana: UEHARA LIMITED.
Nall wondered, as he did every time he came here, what the
people who got off in Uehara thought when the train continued on
westwards instead of returning to Saikyo. The next major Zipangi city
one came to heading west from Uehara was, after all, Saikyo again, and
that after an inconveniently long run. They probably assumed there was
a loop line out there that eventually rejoined the main U&SC trunk
somewhere amid the points and switches of the big railyard east of the
city. And, for that matter, there probably was one.
A white-gloved conductor was pleased to show them to their
compartment in the third carriage, abaft the mail car and the restaurant
car. This was a compact but well-ordered space, currently configured as
a comfortable sitting room with a couple of couches facing each other.
The three travelers stashed Nall's duffel bag, Rory's small wheeled
suitcase, and Amy's slightly preposterous rucksack in the spaces
provided, made certain the heavy little chest was secure in the corner
of the compartment, and then settled in to take stock of the
accommodations and enjoy the view. Right on time, the train pulled out,
heading westward through the sprawling suburbs of outer Saikyo and into
the countryside beyond.
After the conductor came by to punch their tickets and they
could be reasonably assured of some privacy, Amy went over to the corner
where they'd put the chest, regarded it for a few moments, then turned
back and said,
"So what's -in- this box that's so important?" Placing a hand
on the lid, she added, "And why's it warm on the outside?"
Nall grinned and got up from the couch. "You want to see?" he
asked. "It's pretty neat."
Amy glanced at Rory; they shared one of those little smiles
couples do when they've been adventuring together for a long time, then
both indicated that yes, they would like that.
Still grinning, Nall knelt down in front of the chest, applied a
black iron key that matched the bands reinforcing its construction, and
then swung open the lid. An orange glow and a palpable wave of heat, as
from an opened oven door, emerged, and Rory, who had come up quite close
behind him, moved back a little bit in response.
"Whoa," he said.
Inside the box, nestled in a bed of what looked like red-hot
coals, was a spherical object about the size of a large bowling ball,
its outer surface the dull grey-red of hot iron.
"What is it?" Amy asked.
"What's it look like?" Nall replied. "It's an egg."
Amy's brow furrowed. "It -doesn't- look like an egg," she
objected. "For one thing it's perfectly round."
"And sitting on a bed of hot coals, that's not very egg-like in
my experience," Rory agreed matter-of-factly.
Nall sighed. "You kids are cramping my drama," he complained.
"Anyway, it is, I assure you, an egg. Specifically a dragon egg. To be
precise, my Aunt Matalde's egg, which is why it's being kept hot. Reds
like it hot."
Rory thought about that for a second, then raised a finger as if
to bring up a point of order and asked, "... Why are we smuggling a
dragon egg to Diqiu?"
"We're not -smuggling- it. Much as I kinda wish we were. Did
we at any time pretend we -didn't- have a strange object in a mysterious
box?" Nall closed the chest and locked it again, then pocketed the key
and guided the younger pair back to the couches. "Nobody on this planet
-cares- enough to smuggle anything past. Zipang is disappointing that
way."
"Fine," said Amy. "Question stands, though. Why are we taking
a dragon egg to Diqiu?"
"'Cause it's needed there, or soon will be," Nall answered.
"Look, it won't have escaped your notice that Anthy's near term, right?"
"Uh, no, no it hasn't," Rory conceded.
"Well, that," said Nall, pointing to the chest, "needs to be
nearby when, well, you know."
"Oh. ... Why?" Amy wondered.
"Well," said Nall. "That's the kind of story that calls for
some lunch."
REPUBLIC CITY, DIQIU
Corwin and Utena were no strangers to the concept of the Grand
Day Out. In the five-plus years they'd known each other, they'd had
more than their fair share of them. The best ones, they both agreed,
were the ones where they hadn't started with a plan, but just let the
day evolve naturally. They took the same tack this time, and the result
was a day to look back on and smile forevermore.
Downtown by the railway station, they found that the city's
semiformal open-air marketplace was just emerging from its winter
hibernation. It hadn't yet achieved its full flowering, but it was
already a happening enough place that they could spend an hour or so
roaming its stalls and kiosks, assembling various bits and pieces for
the next phase of the day's operations.
At one point, while Corwin was off prowling the still-fairly-
skeletal farmer's market area, Utena was having a fine time haggling
cheerfully with a woman named Kemba from one of the Water Tribes (she
wasn't sure which one) over a blanket not unlike the one on the bed in
the Phoenix House's Avatar Suite. Utena was at a moderate disadvantage
in these negotiations, since she had only a tenuous grasp of the local
currency's actual value, but she and the blanket lady were both having
fun with it, anyway. She'd talked her down to twenty-five yuans by the
time Corwin found her again. He stood off to one side and watched as
she concluded the deal with a handshake, paid twenty-two and a half
yuans, and accepted the blanket with a smile.
"That's a handsome boy you've got there," said Kemba, her eyes
twinkling. "He needs to get more sun, though! He's very pale!"
Utena grinned. "How'd you know we're together?" she asked.
"Your bracelets!" said Kemba, gesturing. "What else could they
mean? Beautiful craftsmanship, too," she added. "May I?"
"Hm? Uh, sure," said Utena, and the vendor took her right hand
and brought it closer to examine the bracelet she wore.
Utena agreed with her, they -were- beautiful. She'd caught
herself pausing to admire hers about a hundred times in the 24 or so
hours she'd had it at this point, and she'd spent at least nine of those
hours asleep. A broad band of some metal that looked like, but she was
reasonably sure wasn't, silver, it bore an intricate, highly stylized
carving of a pair of dragons confronting each other, their tails
intertwined in a manner reminiscent of Celtic knotwork on the other
side. It fit snugly but not tightly around her wrist, like a well-
fitted wristwatch, and had no evident clasp or hinge.
"-Very- beautiful work," said Kemba with satisfaction, releasing
Utena's hand. "My cousin Kiiva is a silversmith. I'll have to mention
this idea to her. Much more substantial than those little finger rings
they use in the East," she added smugly. "Is that the way they're doing
it up North these days?"
Utena smiled. "Something like that," she said.
"But where's your necklace?" Kemba asked with sudden concern.
"Don't tell me he didn't make you one." She looked past Utena at
Corwin, her expression accusing. "For shame, lad! Do they teach you
youngsters nothing of the traditions at the North Pole any longer?"
"Uh... I'm not actu - " Corwin began, but Utena overran him with
a cheery laugh.
"I know! He's hopeless," she agreed, patting Kemba's forearm.
"But I decided to keep him anyway. He's good at other things," she
added with a wink that got a conspiratorial laugh from the blanket lady
and a mild blush from Corwin.
"I'll just - go and - yeah," he said, sidling away, then making
a break for it as soon as he'd reached minimum safe distance.
He was arranging things in the back of the car (which Utena had
almost instantly dubbed "the Korramobile") when she rejoined him a few
moments later. She hugged him from behind before placing the blanket
she'd just purchased on the floor behind the driver's seat (so it
wouldn't blow around) and hopping back into said seat.
"You enjoyed that," Corwin said mildly as he climbed into the
passenger seat.
"Yes I did," Utena replied cheerfully, commencing the starting
procedure more smoothly this time. "I don't know what she was talking
about, exactly, but... " She set the fuel pump control, then paused to
retrieve a small, purse-like leather pouch from her jacket pocket and
hand it to him. "She gave me this to give to you. Would -not- take no
for an answer. Something about giving you one more chance to do it
properly."
Corwin considered the item for a moment, then tucked it away
inside his own jacket, chuckling. "Top of my to-do list," he said. "In
the meantime," he added, drawing a slightly crumpled sheet of paper from
the same pocket and unfolding it, "I found this flyer on a light pole
near the farmer's market. I think it's our plan for tonight after
dinner."
Utena switched the magnetos to BOTH, then took the sheet and
regarded it. "'The Velvet Palanquin Presents Saturday Night Jazz,'" she
read. "Featuring... " She blinked, then looked from the paper to
Corwin's grinning face. "You're kidding me."
He shook his head, took the paper back, and repocketed it.
"Nope. Take a look, they're all over the poles down here."
Utena touched her fingertips together experimentally, then set
the spark advance. "The paste is still wet," she said. "Where to now?"
Corwin waited until after the engine had roared back to life and
settled down to its low, grumbling idle, then pointed down the block.
"Hang a right down there and look for Highway 14," he said. "It's a
great road, goes up into the mountains."
She grinned, pulling away from the curb. "Like the Alfheim
Highroad!" she said happily. "Awesome."
/* Electric Light Orchestra
"Do Ya (Unedited Alternative Version)"
_Flashback_ (2000) */
The road into the mountains northeast of Republic City was
everything Corwin had implied, a ribbon of beautifully maintained tarmac
that twisted thrillingly up one side of a steep river valley. Here
Utena cemented her relationship with the Korramobile, learning exactly
what the limits of the car were. It was a bigger, heavier automobile
than her own beloved CX68 Cobra 2+2, with taller, narrower wheels that
spoke of an earlier generation of motoring, and its vast V12 torque had
to be handled with respect. The steering was very heavy, and operating
the gearshift lever left her in no doubt that she was banging big pieces
of metal together somewhere beneath it. This was a car from the days -
not so long ago in Diqiu - when machines were -machines-, and wrangling
it on this challenging road was a real workout.
She adored it unconditionally.
As they had on a long-ago summer morning in Asgard, they pulled
off the main highway and up a narrow, even twistier side track Corwin
pointed out. This led them to a very similar sort of scenic overlook,
except this one - perched on a crag behind guard rails and backed by a
fragrant piney wood - overlooked not the Golden City of the Gods, but
instead what Utena had heard called the Avatar's City of Peace.
/* Mason Daring
Instrumental score, episode 5 ("Spider")
_From the Earth to the Moon_ (1998)
Episode elapsed time ca. 51:12 - 53:56 */
The Korramobile's hood was too narrow and bumpy to sit on, so
they spread Utena's new blanket on the grass next to the car and ate
their picnic lunch on it instead, Corwin taking items from the basket
he'd bought first thing and spreading them out like a waiter. Cheese,
strange fruits, smoked meats, and some truly spectacular bread; all that
was missing was that golden Asgardian beverage whose name Utena had
never managed to learn. The bottled teas and fruit juices he'd acquired
instead made competent substitutes, though.
In Asgard, when they'd finished their picnic, they'd sat side by
side and just enjoyed the view for a while, contemplating the brush with
death they'd experienced the day before and musing silently about what,
exactly, they -were- to each other, which was not entirely clear to them
at that time.
Here, they didn't have to mull over either of those things.
Instead, they made love on the mountainside, because they were on their
honeymoon and it seemed like the thing to do, and then Corwin took his
turn at the wheel and drove them back to town. They had three hours at
large before they were expected at Ming's, so they went back to the
Phoenix House, grabbed a quick shower, and then let the afternoon unfold
as it would. This ultimately took the shape of a long, leisurely cruise
around the city, while Corwin pointed out favorite landmarks and old
haunts, and unpacked as best he could the complicated history of his
chief contact and best friend in this strange-but-nifty world.
At one point, they drove right past the building where Kaitlyn
and Juniper were, but of course they had no idea they had done so. At
the time, Kate was inside having tea and a long, thoughtful conversation
about the nature of the fighting arts with Master Ito, while Anne was up
on the roof with Azana, far above the street, having a fine old time.
The rooftop space of the firebending academy was about half-
roofed itself, one end enclosed in a sort of three-sided cabana to keep
off the worst of the weather on inclement days. The floor in this area
was straw matting, better for kneeling and sitting than the slate
flagstones in which the rest of the roof was clad. There was a rack
full of neatly folded towels off to one side, a small table with a
pitcher of water and a couple of cups in the corner, and the slightly
incongruous red box of a first-aid kit on the wall next to the stairs
leading down into the building.
Anne and Azana were in this area, practicing an elaboration on
the basic fire punch Korra had taught Anne the night before last, in
which the first strike was immediately followed by a second with the
other hand. Azana was able to perform this maneuver with blinding
speed, such that the two bolts of flame arrived almost as one. In
Anne's case, it was more of a volley, but her impromptu instructor had
good things to say about her technique - and, as she got into the groove
and started really feeling the flow of the maneuver, her range.
"Good!" Azana declared as Anne launched a firebolt clean across
the roof, charring a neat hole in the center of a wooden target at the
opposite edge. "Very good. Boy, you learn quickly. Maybe I -will-
take you on. It'd be the easiest teaching job anyone ever had."
Anne gave her a crooked smile, wiping sweat from her forehead.
"I get the impression the learning curve for firebending gets steeper as
you go up."
"Ha, that's true," Azana agreed, grinning. She tossed Anne a
towel, then coiled herself lithely into something like the lotus
position on the straw-padded floor and gestured for her to have a seat
opposite. Anne considered the way she was sitting and opted for seiza
instead.
"Can I ask you something?" she said.
"Sure," Azana replied. "What's on your mind?"
"If you're not an instructor, and don't really want to be one,
why are you here? Ito-sensei didn't seem to treat you like a student."
Azana half-smiled. "I'm not a student any -more,- at least not
officially. This is where I learned most of what I know, though, and I
like to come back and see what's going on. Grandfather gives me the run
of the place, but, well, you've seen what he's like. He'd badgermole me
about my Duty to the Next Generation of Firebenders until the next Comet
Day if I let him," she said with a fond smile.
"Ito-sensei is your grandfather?" said Anne. "I guess that
explains how you could get away with talking to him like that," she
added wryly.
Azana laughed. "Oh, he's like that with everyone," she said.
"Some of the other instructors here are into discipline and protocol - I
mean, you met Deng," she added, "but Grandfather prefers students who
speak their minds."
"That may help," Anne mumbled (drawing another giggle), then
said aloud, "Well, I appreciate you giving me a tryout, even if you did
have your arm twisted."
"It's no problem, honestly," Azana told her. "I grumble about
it, but Grandfather does have a point. The future of the art -is-
important. And being nagged to train a newbie or two sure beats the
version of the same argument I always have with my -mother- when I see
her," she added, rolling her amber eyes. "To hear her tell it, you'd
think firebenders were on the verge of dying out. As if -that's- going
to happen. Even the Air Nomads aren't in that kind of trouble any more,
there's, what, a couple hundred of them now?" She shrugged. "Anyway,
Grandfather's version is a lot more compatible with my career," she
added cheerfully.
"What do you do?" Anne asked.
"Well, by night I'm the desk clerk at a fancy hotel," Azana
replied, "but my day job is professional bending. I'm the firebender
for one of the local MLB teams - the Temple Island Fire Ferrets. So you
see - having a firebending student is a perfectly valid training
technique." She grinned and added, "Maternity leave? Not so much,"
drawing a laugh from Anne.
"OK, break's over," said Azana, rising. "Let's try a more
complicated exercise - work on some footwork."
Anne was up for that, and before long they were out from under
the cabana and into the afternoon sunshine, their shoes scraping gently
on the slates. Doing this kind of work on the roof of a building in the
middle of a big city gave Anne a pleasant feeling of being back at home;
the rooftop dojo was easily her favorite part of the Christie Avenue
townhouse she and Kaitlyn had moved into when they relocated to New
Avalon. She would have had a hard time believing that kind of fresh air
and sunshine were available in a big city before she saw it, and this
was much the same. It was a cheerful space, with its potted plants in
the corners and its neatly pointed red-brick parapet.
"It's nice up here," she remarked as they reached the front of
the roof, turned as one, and started back toward the cabana.
"Nothing but the best for Fire Lord Zuko's own bending academy,"
said Azana with a smile, nodding toward the smaller copy of the Fire
Lord's portrait, hanging in the middle of the cabana's back wall, that
was the rooftop's only decoration apart from the plants.
"Was it really?" Anne wondered. "It's not just named after
him?"
Azana shook her head. "Oh, no, it was founded by the man
himself, sometime around 110. First firebending school in Republic
City. He didn't operate it himself, of course - far too busy - but it
had the royal endorsement, and he visited when he was in the city. It's
said that he and Avatar Aang used to spar on this very roof."
"Are you related... ?"
"To Aang, no. To Fire Lord Zuko, I don't -think- so? But it's
hard to tell for certain."
"I was just thinking that you look a lot like him," Anne mused.
"Well, part of that is because there's not a lot of variation in
what my people look like," said Azana. "We tend to be dark-haired and
fair-skinned, and among those of us who are firebenders, this eye color
is very common." She half-smiled wryly. "In a way, you're lucky you're
not an obvious firebender. We haven't always had the best reputation.
Even today there are people who see my eyes and immediately get... "
She hesitated. "... weird on me.
"It's no longer a guaranteed indicator of anything - the world's
gotten a lot more cosmopolitan since his day," she went on, breaking the
pattern long enough to indicate the portrait of Zuko. "If you stay
around town for a while, you'll hear Republic City called the melting
pot that finished what the old coastal colonies like Yu Dao started, but
realistically? It's been less than two centuries since the Hundred Year
War. Some of the old hurts still linger, despite all that Zuko and Aang
built after the war. Especially in the Earth Kingdom, there are still
people who hate us - call us 'ashmakers'. Not that it's entirely
undeserved," she admitted sadly. "If you get out to Ba Sing Se
sometime, check out the Wall Museum. Some of the stuff the Fire Nation
got up to back then... " She shook her head. "Seriously crazy."
"I'm sorry," Anne said. "I didn't mean to dredge up... "
"Nah, it's OK," Azana replied. "It's stuff you're going to have
to know if you're going to be a firebender, anyway. There's... baggage
attached." Then, brightening, she went on, "Anyway, I don't think I'm
related to good ol' Zuko, but I wouldn't mind if I was. He was a
handsome devil. And you never know!" she added with a grin. "He lived
a long time and did a lot of... interesting... things." She winked
cheerfully, her good humor restored, and began the pattern again. "Not
all of them very well-documented!"
Anne laughed. She was enjoying her lesson, and she had come to
the conclusion that she liked Azana; she was unpretentious and
easygoing, two traits that went a long way with someone as weary-since-
childhood of pretense and martinetry as Anne Cross of Orron IV. Not
hard to look at, either, though not really Anne's type.
They worked on the more complicated pattern for another hour or
so, until the lengthening shadows reminded Azana that she had to get
ready for work.
"All right, quitting time for today," she said, retrieving the
towels they'd used earlier and handing Anne's to her. "For what it's
worth, I'm with Korra on this one - you've got potential. How much
longer are you in town?"
"A week, I think. Last I heard, the plan was to head home next
Saturday." Anne scrubbed at her hairline, then draped the towel around
her neck. "If all goes well, I'll be coming back sometime in the middle
of June."
"Hm," said Azana. They made their way down the stairs into the
building, closing the trapdoor behind them. "Well, that works for me.
Spring training starts later this week, but it's a lot less regimented
than the spring training in, say, baseball, so there'll be plenty of
opportunities for us to keep exploring if you want. After that I'll be
pretty well tied up for most of April with all the business involved in
getting the season underway, but by mid-June we should be into a pretty
good groove. There'll be time to breathe. Be a good time for us to
really get started, if you want."
"That would be great," said Anne.
"Well, then, let's go talk to Grandfather and your sensei and
see if we can set it up." She grinned and held the door at the bottom
of the rooftop stairwell. "Say, if you guys aren't doing anything
Tuesday afternoon, you should come to Shinobi Arena. We've got our
first spring training match at 4:30. Us against the Frostbite Point Ice
Wraiths. Should be a good game."
"Sounds like fun!" Anne agreed.
Back on Air Temple Island, Sergei couldn't help but feel a bit
miffed.
He understood that he tended to make a sensation wherever he
went; he couldn't help it if people weren't properly equipped to cope
with his sheer awesomeness, but he was usually magnanimous enough to
acknowledge that, yes, it could sometimes be a problem. Still, the
place he and his mistress found themselves in at the moment seemed
plenty peculiar enough to handle him. It never occurred to him that
there might be animal control regulations in town that it would take
some time for Kaitlyn, even with the Avatar's help, to get into
compliance with. All Serge knew was that she and Juni had gone into
town and left him on the island, and now he found himself thoroughly
bored.
He considered swimming to the mainland and tracking them down.
The latter wouldn't be that hard, but the former would probably take too
long. It'd be just his luck to get there and then discover that they'd
caught the ferry while he was on his way over, and were now back on the
island, wondering where he'd got to. Reluctantly, he discarded that
plan.
The young humans in the funny clothes had been a worthwhile
diversion for a little while, but they were all busy doing whatever it
was they were doing, and none of it made enough sense to Serge to remain
interesting for long. The lemurs were no help at all; they just cleared
out as soon as they spotted him coming, and he didn't care to chase
them, as he was reasonably certain this would be misinterpreted by the
people as well. As for the giant, shaggy creatures who lived in the
caves, they were even less interesting than the humans. All they seemed
to want to do was eat hay or sleep.
By midafternoon, he'd been reduced to prowling the crags and
corners of the island, looking for anything in any way diverting.
Nothing was forthcoming, and Serge had just about resigned himself to
going back to the bison caves and reconsidering his interest in sleep.
He was on his way back there now, taking a shortcut across a little
courtyard out in back of the women's quarters, when he at last smelled
something interesting - and became aware a moment later that something
interesting had smelled him as well.
Another animal, not as enormous as the sky bison, but quite a
bit bigger than Serge himself, emerged from a small outbuilding in the
courtyard, snuffling the air. Undaunted as ever, Serge ambled over to
say hello, trying as he did to catalog his new acquaintance. At first
sight he thought it - Serge corrected himself, she - might simply be a
colossal white dog. Her broad, blocky head reminded Serge of Buddy, the
Labrador retriever who lived a few doors down from their old house on
Tomodachi; but there was something bear-like about her giant stature and
the way she carried herself.
This remarkable creature seemed equally unconcerned about the
appearance of a very large striped cat in her yard; she moseyed on over,
still sniffing thoughtfully, until her nose nearly touched his. For a
moment they regarded each other impassively.
Then the dog, bear, whatever she was, went back to her house and
returned with a piece of meat, which she dropped in front of Serge,
having correctly deduced that he was the only other carnivore on the
island (since the Avatar, by long agreement with the management of the
Air Temple, was one only when she was -off- the island). Serge regarded
it for a moment. He wasn't terribly hungry, having had a substantial
breakfast, but it did smell good, and the offer was exceedingly
generous, so after a decent interval he bowed his head graciously,
picked up the meat, and neatly sheared it in two with his teeth, leaving
the other half for his host.
Having thus established full diplomatic relations, the two
settled down to have a bit of late lunch together.
"There she is again," Utena said suddenly.
"... Pardon?" said Corwin, who had been occupied with parallel
parking the Korramobile in front of Ming and Daughters, Clothiers.
"The girl in the dark coat with the big shoulder bag," said
Utena, gesturing with her head. Corwin set the handbrake, shut down the
car, and looked where she was pointing. There was indeed a girl,
standing on the corner a block or so further down, in a dark coat and
carrying a large shoulder bag.
"Looks like she's waiting for the streetcar," Corwin observed,
climbing out of the car. "So?"
"This is like the fourth time I've seen her this afternoon,"
Utena said as Corwin came around and opened her door for her. "She was
at the market, looking at those weird masks a couple of stalls down from
Kemba's place. She was at the Beifong Memorial. She was at the Harmony
Tower. And there she is again! I think she's following us."
"Hmm," said Corwin, considering. "Well... could be. We're a
pair of exotic strangers bombing around Republic City in Avatar Korra's
very obvious car, and we did make a pretty big entrance at the Phoenix
House last night. I expect we're a certain kind of news."
Utena blinked. "You think she's a reporter?"
"One way to find out," Corwin replied, then gave a big overhead
wave toward the corner and called, "Excuse me! Are you a reporter?"
The girl visibly spooked, like a startled horse, turning big
eyes toward him; then she sprang onto a passing streetcar and vanished
inside it.
"Subtle," said Utena.
Corwin shrugged. "Must have a nervous disposition," he said.
"Ah well. Let's get our -couture- on. Have to admit I've been looking
forward to this."
"Are you secretly a girl?" Utena wondered as she took his arm
and they crossed the street to the shop.
"I think you ought to know the answer to that by -now,-" Corwin
replied mildly, "but if you give me an hour or so I'll be happy to
arrange another demonstration."
/* ZZ Top
"Sharp Dressed Man"
_Eliminator_ (1983) */
The staff of Ming and Daughters, Clothiers appeared to consist
of identical quadruplets, each wearing a very slight variation on the
same very elaborately embroidered gown, and they were expecting their
curious guests. When Utena and Corwin entered the shop, they were
instantly separated, each taken to a different corner of the
establishment by a pair of extremely polite young women and then given
the business.
The next hour was a whirlwind of fittings, color selections,
experimental style adjustments, sometimes with the client's input,
usually without. Items were adjusted on the fly, occasionally with
outright -alterations- performed by one of the Daughters while the
others briskly, efficiently selected accessories or refined the fit of
some other bit of the ensemble. Neither Corwin nor Utena could see what
was happening to the other - there were screens in the way - but there
weren't any obvious sounds of mayhem coming from either corner, and
besides, each was being kept far too busy to be that worried about the
other for the moment.
At the end of the hour, having had the opportunity to say
perhaps a half-dozen words apiece, they were brought back together in
the front of the shop and herded out onto the sidewalk with much bowing
and thanking-for-coming; then the door closed behind them with a cheery
jingle of its little brass bell, and there they stood, blinking
bemusedly at each other.
They were dressed to the nines, as they had been a few times
before (the previous day, for instance), but in styles that were almost
entirely new for them. Corwin's suit was of the very latest full-formal
cut, a style that had only lately emanated from the tastemakers of Ba
Sing Se: a three-piece ensemble, its notch-fronted clawhammer jacket and
sleekly creased trousers a deep but faintly lustrous onyx black, with a
high-collared white shirt and a silver-grey waistcoat that seemed to
shimmer faintly, like quartz crystals in granite. Around his neck, one
of the Daughters had deftly knotted a silk cravat in a slatey storm-sky
blue, hearkening back to the Water Tribe roots she'd imagined he had.
This color was echoed in the band of the low-crowned top hat they'd put
on him, which, along with the midnight-blue-lined Inverness cape draping
his broad shoulders, made him feel slightly like Zatara the Magnificent.
For Utena's part, the brace of Daughters who'd seen to her had
apparently decided that - though she didn't resemble the women of the
Fire Nation in any easily spotted way - that nation's style would suit
her best... and Corwin believed they had been absolutely correct,
because she looked frankly amazing even by his extremely high-baseline
standards. The basis of the outfit was simple enough in principle: a
sleek black sheath dress, ankle-length but slit nearly to the waist on
the right side. It was snug-fitting all the way to its notched Mandarin
collar, but sleeveless, its seams and edges a rich flame scarlet. Over
it, she wore a double minicloak in two shades of red, its darker outer
layer covering her shoulders and about half of her upper arms, the inner
layer (which matched the piping of her dress) barely visible in front
but reaching to her waist in back. They'd done something that put a
little bit of a wave in her hair, too, changing it from the standard
casual, feathery tousle to a sort of Lauren Bacall look.
Corwin ended up not saying about half a dozen different things
before settling on, "You should do glamorous more often, 'cause you do
it really, really well."
Utena blushed slightly. "Thanks. My second dress in as many
days," she quipped. "I'm going to develop a complex."
Corwin grinned. "Relax," he said. "You look amazing, and
besides, nobody's ever going to see you but me, the staff of this shop,
everyone in the restaurant - "
There was a brilliant flash of light from across the street,
near the car. Without missing a single beat, Corwin went on matter-of-
factly, " - and the entire circulation of the Republic City Tribune,
unless you intend to chase that girl down and make her disappear."
"Wha - hey!" Utena cried, as the girl in the dark coat - now
carrying what had probably been the contents of that bulky shoulder bag
all along, a big old-fashioned press camera - darted away down the
street.
"If you do," Corwin added dryly, "please don't hurt the camera."
He shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid I simply can't be in a
relationship with a woman who would damage a Rolleiflex."
Utena thrashed out the matter in her head for a couple of
seconds, her jaw working, and then threw up her hands with the sort of
grin a gambler sports when going all in. "What the hell," she said.
"Let's go to dinner."
They saw the girl from the Tribune (if that's what she was;
since Corwin's remark about that paper's circulation, that was how
they'd both mentally tagged her) again outside Kwong's. Corwin was
vaguely tempted to pretend he'd mistaken her for an employee and ask her
to park the car, but Utena, who had apparently decided she liked the
reporter's pluck, ordered him to leave the poor girl alone and let her
do her job.
Inside, the restaurant was elegance itself, easily the swankiest
place they'd ever eaten in together. The staff were elegant and
courteous without being obsequious (except the headwaiter, but then,
that was part of the job); the food was excellent, and, unlike in most
other fine dining establishments either of them had experienced before,
the management wasn't shy about the portion size either. It was all
very well-calculated to leave the diner satisfied, but not so as to
hamper whatever plans he or she might have for the remainder of the
evening.
While they ate, Corwin and Utena continued their discussion from
earlier - this world and its peculiarities, how Corwin had come to know
it, and how the person he'd come to know it through had entered his
parents' lives in the first place. This, in its various nuances, was a
story to rival even Utena's own, and that wasn't something she could say
about everyone she encountered - even people who had lived so many times
longer than she had. She had already decided that she liked Corwin's
old friend Korra very much, but now she found herself admiring her as
well; and not just for being a four-way element-bending badass, though
she had to admit that didn't hurt.
After dinner they adjourned to the Velvet Palanquin, which was a
nightclub of the old school - similar in concept, if utterly different
in execution, to the good old Cobalt Club back in New Avalon. The
Palanquin's decor was relentlessly Asian, even by the standards of
Republic City; not really to Corwin's taste, nor Utena's, though they
had to admit the standards to which the place was built were impeccable.
Besides, they weren't really there to admire the wall hangings and light
fixtures. They were there to hear Baron Zoria and his Circle of Horns
and dance, for the second time in two days, and that was exactly what
they proceeded to do.
/* Seat Belts
"Tank!"
_Cowboy Bebop_ (1998) */
If Utena had been absolutely backed into a corner and forced to
choose between the Circle of Horns or Captain Joe Hodgson and his Cobalt
Orchestra, she would've had a very hard time making the decision. Both
were excellent ensembles, fully capable of keeping her interested on a
dance floor for as long as they cared to do so. On balance, she liked
the Cobalt's repertoire a little more. The Baron's crew occasionally
wandered off into territory that was a little too experimental for her.
On the other hand, they also had a wider range, occasionally going for
straight-up Chicago blues and New Orleans hot jazz, where Captain Joe
was strictly a big-band man.
"I don't wish to seem insecure," said Corwin, "but generally
when I'm dancing with a woman and she's frowning like that, it's a sign
I'm doing something wrong."
"Huh? Oh, heh heh, no. I just inadvertently set myself an
impossible problem to consider," she said, explaining the train of
thought she'd just been having. While she was doing so, the number they
were dancing to ended; they made their way off the floor to one of the
tables around its edge and sat to catch their breath and have a drink.
"Aha," Corwin said, nodding. "That -is- a tough one.
Personally, I'd have to go with - ... hmm."
"What?" Utena asked, seeing his own expression suddenly change
to a thoughtful frown. She turned in her seat, following his eyeline
back past the bar to the lobby entrance. "Well, I'll be damned," she
added as she saw the kerfuffle happening there.
It was the girl from the Tribune again, of course, and she
seemed to have gotten into a spot of bother with the bouncer. For a
second, Utena wondered what the problem was. She'd changed her clothes
since they'd seen her outside Kwong's, and though not quite as dolled up
as Utena and Corwin were, she should've been perfectly acceptable for
the club. Not a bad-looking girl, in fact, in a green dress that was
similar in cut to Utena's, but simpler and not as masterfully fitted,
with short sleeves and long gloves instead of a minicape.
Maybe she's underage? Utena thought, though she doubted it; the
drinking age in Republic City appeared to be 18, and though very young,
the reporter didn't seem younger than -that-. Then Utena caught a flash
of metal - an object over which the girl and the bouncer seemed to be
vying. She rose and headed toward them, reacting instinctively to the
possibility, however remote, that it might be a weapon.
Corwin was up and striding purposefully across the lobby by that
point too, half a step ahead of her. From behind, Utena could see that
his shoulders, their breadth accentuated by the cut of his jacket, were
set for action. Even in this tense situation, the sight, and the fact
that she knew him so well it was plain to her, made her smile a little.
Then they'd reached the girl and the bouncer, and Corwin's voice
cut across their argument like a whipcrack:
"Are you -insane?!- Don't break that!" His hand flashed out
and snatched the metal object from the bouncer's hand a moment after he,
in turn, had wrested it from the girl's. Looking at it, Corwin nodded
and went on, "This is a Minox A3S!" Decisively, he snapped the
minicamera shut and stuck it in the inside pocket of his jacket. "It's
probably worth more than -you- are," he told the bouncer.
"Mind your own business, pally," the bouncer told him, causing
Utena to not-really-suppress a little snort of laughter as Corwin's
eyebrows went up.
"'Pally'? Really? Twenty-three skidoo, my good hotman," he
replied. "We'll take it from here."
The bouncer stood his ground, glowering, for a second or so;
then his eyes shifted to Corwin's left, saw that the woman who was with
him was standing right there and looking equally up for a problem if the
bouncer wanted to make one, and made a give-me-strength kind of roll.
"Get her outta here," he growled, angling a beefy thumb toward
the exit behind him. "Her kind isn't welcome here."
"What a winning disposition you have," Utena said sweetly. "I
can see why you chose a profession that involves a lot of interacting
with the public."
"(Zap!)" mumbled Corwin delightedly, putting up a hand for her
to high-five in a low-key sort of way. The bouncer kept glaring for a
second, then turned on his heel and stalked back to his station.
Corwin smiled at him, then took the girl's elbow and started for
the door. "OK, c'mon. We've got maybe five minutes before Mr. Friendly
calls the tinheads."
She took her arm back, but kept walking with him and Utena as
they went outside. "What -century- are you from?" she demanded once
they reached the sidewalk. "Nobody's called them 'tinheads' since the
180s." Catching his arm, she turned him to face her and demanded, "Who
-are- you?"
Utena grinned. "Now where would your sense of accomplishment be
if we just -told- you?"
"Totally," Corwin agreed. He took the spy camera out of his
pocket and put it in the reporter's hand. "Here. Be more careful with
that, it's a classic. I dug your TLR earlier, by the way. You've got
good taste in hardware." He smiled wryly. "Hopefully you're a decent
hand with it. I don't want to open the Trib tomorrow and find out you
cut off my head getting -her- centered," he added with a nod toward
Utena. "She -always- gets all the attention when we go out. It's
getting boring."
Utena nodded in agreement, then did a theatrical double-take and
said, "Wait, what?" When Corwin only wagged his eyebrows cheesily in
response, Utena sighed, fists on hips, and quipped, "It's not too late
to unmarry you, mister."
Corwin mock-winced. "Ixnay! Not in front of the press," he
said urgently. Then, turning to the reporter again, he said, "Uh, you
-are- with the press, right, and not just some random loon?"
"For the record, I'll feel really silly if -that- turns out to
be the case," Utena put in. "I've been kind of rooting for you this
whole time."
The girl blinked at them as if trying to decide whether they
were dangerously crazy, or just attractively so. "I, um... " Without
really knowing quite why - she wasn't required to in circumstances like
this - she produced her press card. "Emily Wong, Republic City
Tribune."
"Ha," said Corwin, "I -told- you she was from the Tribune.
She's way too classy to be one of those creeps from the United Daily
News."
"OK, so, look," said Utena. "Why are you following us around?
Why are we news?"
Emily gave her an incredulous look. "Are you kidding me? You
showed up out of nowhere on a -sky bison- and you're -obviously- not Air
Nomads, you're in the Avatar Suite, you're driving the Avatar's -car,-
you've been all over -town- today, and -look- at you!" She folded her
arms and gave Utena a challenging look. "People are wondering about
you. That's sort of the definition of news."
"Told you," Corwin remarked.
"Hush, you, I'm working an angle here," said Utena.
Corwin nodded. "Yes ma'am, carry on."
"Thank you." Putting her arm around Emily's shoulders, Utena
steered her gently off the sidewalk, explaining as she did so, "OK, I
got an idea. We're not gonna tell you -anything.- We'll go on being
just as mysterious as before - in fact, we'll play it like we never even
noticed you."
"How does that help me in any way?" asked Emily skeptically.
"Are you kidding?" Utena replied. "With a little industry, you
can keep this going for -days!- Your editor will be on the edge of his
-seat.- And when the payoff finally comes - and it will, if you trust
us - you'll be number one with a bullet on the Tribune society page.
Play your cards right, that could take you anywhere." She stopped,
turned to face the reporter, and grinned conspiratorially at her. "Are
you in?"
Emily eyed her warily. "... You're crazy."
"That accusation is not unfamiliar to me," Utena agreed, then
repeated, "Are you in?"
The young reporter looked from her to Corwin and back again a
couple of times, then grinned in return.
"Heck yeah," she said. "-Whatever- you're up to, it sure beats
covering cotillion balls."
"Excellent. Then we have a deal." Utena gestured to Corwin.
"We're gonna do what we do, you're gonna cover it without getting in our
faces too much, and sometime next week we'll tie it all together." She
clouted Emily companionably on the shoulder. "Have a lovely rest of
your evening - we plan to - and don't take any wooden nickels."
Turning, she started back toward Corwin, then paused and turned back to
add in exactly the same friendly tone of voice, "Oh - and if I find you
in the closet tonight when I go to hang up my dress, I -will-
defenestrate you. Just so we're clear."
Emily giggled. "You're OK there," she assured Utena. "I have
limits."
"Good to know." Utena made the Duelist curtsey-bow to her;
behind, Corwin threw her the Water Tribe salute, just to stir the pot a
little more. She looked momentarily puzzled, then replied Earth
Kingdom-fashion before retreating down the street.
"You're brilliant," Corwin told Utena as she rejoined him.
"Thank you, I believe I am," she agreed cheerfully, giving him a
kiss. Out of the corner of her eye, she picked up the blink of a camera
flash. "OK, kid, you earned that one," she murmured wryly; then she
took Corwin's arm and they went back into the Velvet Palanquin.
SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2410
Breakfast on Air Temple Island, and all the gang were there this
time: Korra, Kaitlyn, Anne, and Anthy, all gathered at the corner table
in the Air Temple refectory where Korra usually ate when she was on the
island. This morning they'd been joined by Nyima and her elder sister
Lhakpa, and Anthy had to acknowledge (if only internally) that she saw
Nyima's point now. She still didn't agree that the younger sister was
-ugly-, but Nyima's charm was a much more nuanced thing, brought out by
animation rather than repose. Lhakpa, who was two years older than
Nyima, -was- more attractive in the conventional sense. The proportions
of her face and body were more classically harmonious, and her long,
dark hair didn't hurt either - though, Anthy reflected, she would lose
that, at least temporarily, when and if she attained her own mastery of
airbending.
Paradoxically, though, Lhakpa seemed less at ease with herself
than Nyima; she seemed a little smug about being "the pretty one", but
underneath it Anthy sensed a certain need to be agreed with on that
point, to be reassured that she really was. It made her... not a bully,
exactly, or cruel, but she did seem to treat her younger sister a shade
more harshly than anyone else, making remarks to her that would have
been offensively cutting to anyone else. Nyima didn't seem to mind.
Anthy suspected it had been going on for so long she barely noticed any
more. It reminded her a little of how the Kaoru twins had been, during
that phase when they hadn't been enemies any more, but hadn't quite
learned how to be friends either. That was a little bit sad, but at the
same time, she had to admire the aplomb with which Nyima handled it.
The six of them were all chatting in a quiet, friendly way over
their waffles and fruit; at the end of the table, Korra was flipping
idly through the morning edition of the Republic City Tribune. She'd
started with the sports page, as was her wont, and then worked her way
through the rest of the paper, bringing various items to the others'
attention as she went. This appeared to be a long-standing habit, about
which no one found cause to remark.
This went on until she reached the front page of the paper's
fourth section ("Around Town"); then the flow of commentary from her end
of the table stopped and she just sat there, coffee cup in one hand,
paper in the other hand, perusing the page with an intent expression.
Anne noticed the silence first, looked up, and saw the corner of
Korra's right eye twitch, then the corner of her mouth; then the Avatar
burst out laughing, causing everyone in the room to look up from what
they were doing for a moment. The other airbenders and Acolytes
dismissed the phenomenon almost immediately and went back to their
breakfasts.
Korra's tablemates sat looking curiously at her. Still
chuckling, she turned the paper around and held out the Section 4 front
page, saying, "Check this out."
The six columns of text covering the bottom third of the page
were too small for anyone but Anthy, who was right next to her, to read,
but everyone could perfectly well see the stack of headlines above it.
These started out in the kind of gigantic font usually reserved for
Major Historical Events, then worked their way down through several
scale reductions in the subheads:
WHO ARE THEY?
Glamorous Mystery Couple Take Republic City By Storm
"They Came on a Sky Bison," Say Hotel Witnesses
Avatar Museum Officials Offer No Comment on
Couple's Possession of Classic Satomobile
Can That Possibly Be Her Real Hair?
Exclusive Photographs by Our Correspondent, Emily Wong
Above all this - naturally - was a large picture of Utena and
Corwin, dressed to kill and evidently standing on the sidewalk in front
of a shop somewhere in the city. They seemed to be discussing
something, not aware of the camera. She was smiling wryly, her hands
open at waist height in front of her, and he was giving her a boyish
grin, left thumb casually hooked in his waistcoat pocket, his right arm
in the process of slipping around her waist.
"Ha!" said Kaitlyn, delighted.
"Oh wow, is that what Corwin looks like now?" Lhakpa asked.
"He's amazing. And so's his girl!" She elbowed her sister. "Right,
Nyima?"
"I'm sure I don't know," Nyima mumbled, reddening.
"Lhakpa," said Korra with a tone of friendly warning in her
voice. Then she cleared her throat, fluffed the paper, and began to
read the text of the article to the rest of them.
"Republic City, Sanyue 13," she read. "A mysterious pair of
glamorous figures made a dramatic entrance to this city Friday night.
Witnesses told this reporter that the couple arrived at the ultra-grand
Phoenix House Hotel aboard an Air Nomad sky bison, which - hmph, should
be who, surely - then departed without them in the direction of Air
Temple Island."
She skimmed a bit more of the article, which seemed to be a
general precis of what Corwin and Utena had been up to Saturday morning
and afternoon. The reporter seemed particularly taken by the facts that
the mystery pair were staying in the Phoenix House's Avatar Suite, and
that they appeared to be driving the Avatar's own historic Satomobile,
which sources had confirmed was missing from its place in the Avatar
Museum.
"The management and staff of the Phoenix House, exercising their
world-famous discretion, declined to comment on the couple's identities
or what, if any, connection they have to the Avatar," she concluded.
"This correspondent will keep pursuing the story, as there is little
doubt that the whole town wants to know: Who are these people?" She
lowered the paper. "Bunch more pictures behind the jump - including a
nice one of them making out in front of the Velvet Pal," she added with
a slightly wicked grin. Kate held out a hand; Korra closed the paper
and handed it down to her.
"That's a great picture of them on the front," Anne observed.
"Yes it is," Anthy agreed. "Korra, do you think the paper would
sell me a proper print of that one? I'd like to have it for their
wedding album. Possibly some of the others as well," she added with a
wry little smile as Kate opened to the jump.
"I think that can be arranged," Korra agreed cheerfully. Then
she got out a small metal object that Anne realized was a mobile phone,
if mobile phones had been invented by the people responsible for the
design language of Jedi lightsabers. Korra's looked like it was
supposed to be part of a set with the lightsaber owned by Utena's Jedi
Master friend, Atin-Vae Springsteen.
Still grinning, Korra thumbed a speeddial button, then put the
phone to her ear. "Hey, Cheong! Yep, I saw. Yeah, I know them...
remember Corwin Ravenhair? Mmm-hmm. Yeah, he's not so li'l any more.
Look, they're going to be in town for the next week or so. No, he's not
working on the Comet case with me, he's on his honeymoon. It won't be
like the Tsunami Blue thing. Promise. OK? Good. Now, what I need is
for you to grab twenty copies of this morning's Trib and stockpile them
for later. Then keep track of the news stories involving them - the
Trib's put one of their society page cub reporters on it - girl name of
Emily Wong, you know her? ... Uh-huh, I thought she came across that
way. I dunno, just something about the way she writes her copy, she
sounds determined. Heh, yeah. When she calls you, and she will, just
give her the usual boilerplate. Haha, exactly, why give 'em anything
for free? Let's see how good she is. Be sure to get extra copies of
those papers too. Got it? ... Good, good. One more thing. The Wong
girl's a photographer too - pretty good one. There are some nice shots
with today's article, and we'd like 'em for the album. Can you get
ahold of Min over in the Trib photo office and see if she'll shoot us a
set of archive prints? Awesome. Call me if anything weird comes up -
well, moreso than usual. Thanks! You're a pal. Bye!"
Switching off the phone, Korra put it down and said, "There!
Situation managed!"
"Do you have a -press agent?-" Kate asked. "That's what that
sounded like."
"I sure do," Korra said ruefully. "Or rather the White Lotus
does. When I first started out as a public figure, I needed a lot of
adult supervision. Which I didn't always put up with," she added with a
wry grin. "I was the first Avatar who really had to deal with a news
cycle less than 48 hours long, and I, uh... didn't, really, at first.
Someone decided my image needed a little managing. That was a long time
ago, though. Nowadays we do a lot more working together. Cheong's
actually the Master Lotus I have the -least- trouble with. Unlike
-some- of them," she added with a dark glance toward the far table where
Jinora and her siblings sat, "-he- makes my life -easier.-"
"That's a cool phone," said Anne, hoping to steer the
conversation away from something that plainly still annoyed Korra.
"You like it?" Korra said, smiling. "It's a gearPhone III. A
couple of the engineers at SCM, the electronics division of Future
Industries, customized it for me," she explained. "Not their fanciest
model - the gearPhone V came out last month, it does everything but
steam baozi. The III's a rugged little beast, though, and that's more
what I need. This one's got all the latest security features. No more
late-night prank summonings to volcanoes that -aren't- erupting for this
Avatar!" She sighed. "That's something none of my predecessors had to
put up with either."
Corwin sloped into the Avatar Suite's sitting room, still in the
act of pulling a sweatshirt adorned with the logotype of a Neo-Russian
motorcycle manufacturer over his head, to find Utena sitting on the
couch, reading. This wasn't that surprising - a Standard edition of the
Phoenix Flight book had, as promised, been waiting for them when they
got in last night, but by that point they were prepared to do absolutely
nothing apart from crash mightily. What was surprising was that she
wasn't reading the book, which lay on the coffee table in front of her.
She was instead regarding a sheet of paper, or had been until she
noticed him entering the room.
"Hey," she said, smiling. "You just missed your girlfriend."
Corwin arched an eyebrow. "You're going to have to be more
specific," he said dryly, taking a seat at the other end of the couch,
then added in an affectedly world-weary tone, "One has so -many.-"
Utena rolled her eyes. "Uh-huh, you're -all- that," she agreed.
"Azana, the night clerk. She stopped by before heading home to give us
this." She handed him the paper. It was covered in Tongyu writing,
apart from a couple of what looked like pen-and-ink drawings of vintage
racing cars in exciting action poses, replete with speed lines, cartoony
clouds of dust, and improbable camber angles. "Seems to be a flyer for
something." Utena frowned as a thought came to her. "Say, why can't
the Lens translate stuff in other languages? You should get your mom
working on that."
Corwin looked up from the flyer, meeting her eyes. "You know
you're right? I totally should. That's a -great- idea." He picked up
the phone from the endtable, dialed zero, and said, "Hi, Corwin
Ravenhair here. I need to send a telegram."
Two minutes later, with Utena giggling in the background, he
hung up and returned his attention to the flyer. "There. Now, let's
see what we have here. You're right, it's a flier."
"For a car show?" Utena hazarded, based on the illustrations.
Corwin grinned. "Better, a -race.- The Future City Historic
Grand Prix."
Utena slid across the couch and leaned against his shoulder,
looking at the race-car cartoons again. "I like the contradiction
there," she said.
"I know, right? It's where Future Industries is. The company's
so big its headquarters has its own little city around it."
"Oh, like Yamazaki City on New Japan."
Corwin nodded. "Exactly."
"Hm," said Utena. "Bet the city council doesn't enforce the
industrial regulations too diligently... "
"Are you kidding?" Corwin replied. "Their workplace accident
rates are the lowest in the United Republic. Anyway, it's a vintage
motor race. Azana probably figured we'd be interested because of the
Korramobile - they run racing cars from about that same period. I went
to the one in... jeez, '03, I think."
"When is it?" Utena wondered.
Corwin checked the smaller print. "Hm... three o'clock this
afternoon. Usually runs about two hours."
"Think we'll be done with the history museum by then?"
"Could do," Corwin said agreeably, "though if we want to try it,
we'd better head out now."
1943 TECHNOLOGY DRIVE
NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI
Skuld Ravenhair was watching cartoons, because she was a grown
woman and nobody could stop her, when the doorbell rang. Puzzled, she
paused the show and got up to answer the door.
She found there a young boy in the uniform of the Tomodachi Bell
Corporation, the conglomerate that handled most of Tomodachi's
telecommunications traffic, holding a small yellow envelope. He asked
her whether she was Skuld Ravenhair; when she said she was, he handed
her the envelope, bowed, turned, mounted his bicycle, and sped away.
Puzzled, Skuld turned the envelope over in her hand, then tore
off the end, removed a slip of paper from inside, and laughed. She
hadn't realized Tomodachi Bell even -did- telegrams any more, but here
was one; based on the codes printed on the back, it had been relayed
through ZTT in Saikyo to Tomodachi Bell's central office downtown, but
had originated in Republic City. Which meant she was reasonably sure
who it came from before she turned it over and read the message itself:
AUTO TRANSLATE FNCTN A LA GIFT OF TARDIS FOR NEXT LENSOS
REV STOP CANT BELIEVE YOU DIDNT THINK OF YRS AGO STOP
CWCD UTENAS IDEA STOP BRILLIANT BUT WE KNEW THAT STOP
LOVE CORWIN
ENDIT
"Hmm," she said, re-reading the message thoughtfully. Then,
turning to go back into the house, she tucked it into the top pocket of
her shirt and mused, "That -is- brilliant... "
AIR TEMPLE ISLAND
YUE BAY, DIQIU
After breakfast, Korra and company went out to the courtyard to
consider their day. They were still at it when, a few minutes later, a
sandy-haired man in the elaborate uniform of a Republic City civil
servant ran up the path leading down to the ferry docks and presented
himself to them with an elaborate bow.
"Oh, hey, Chin," said Korra casually. "What brings you all the
way out here? If it's Councilwoman Okamoto again... " she added, a
slight note of warning entering her voice.
Chin smiled and shook his head. "No, no, Avatar," he assured
her. "I think she's finally taken the hint. I have a delivery for... "
He removed a large folder from one of the capacious sleeves of his
bureaucrat's tunic and peered through his spectacles at the address on
it, then went on, "... Kaitlyn Hutchins? Am I pronouncing that
correctly?"
"Close enough," said Kate with a smile.
"Excellent," he said, opening the folder to reveal a large
envelope with a neatly printed cover sheet attached. "I'll just need
you to sign for the package. In addition to the proper licensure and
acknowledgement that all the relevant documents have been received and
properly filed, his Excellency the Commissioner of the Bureau for Animal
Control has asked me to inform you that the Republic City Police have
been provided with a detailed description of your... " Chin squinted at
the page. "I beg your pardon," he said, sounding dismayed. "This must
be a typographical error. Is it a tigerdillo or a tigervark? This just
says 'tiger'." He shook his head. "Oh dear. That'll need to be
corrected posthaste."
"No, it's quite correct," Kate assured him. Then, raising her
voice slightly, she called, "Serge? Serge!"
With a tigerish sound that might almost have been a faintly
grumpy "What?" Serge came around the berry bush he'd been napping behind
and padded toward them. In that moment, Korra had the unique pleasure
of seeing Chief Civil Servant Chin, a man easily dismayed by paperwork
problems but famously unflappable under any other circumstances,
outright dumbfounded.
It only lasted a second, after which he stopped goggling, pulled
himself together, and said, "Hm! How remarkable," before handing Kate
the envelope and an elaborate fountain pen. "Sign here, here, and
initial here, here, and here, please."
Kate took the pen and envelope, juggled them a bit so they were
in the correct hands, and then took a moment to work out how to sign and
initial with the old-fashioned pen in such a way that she didn't end up
smeared to the elbow with ink. Do they not have lefties in this world?
she wondered wryly as she negotiated the task, then handed the pen and
the signed sheet back to Chin.
"Thank you." He made the pen and paper disappear into his
sleeve with a practiced ease they all admired, then swept them an
elaborate bow, doffing his pompom-topped hat in the process, wished them
all a very pleasant day, and trotted away.
Korra watched him go, a half-smile on her face, then turned to
the others and observed, "I didn't have the heart to tell him we're all
going to end up on the same ferryboat together in a minute." Then,
putting thumb and forefinger in the corners of her mouth, she let out
the kind of whistle that would stop every taxicab on the block in
downtown New Avalon. A moment later, the great white shape of a polar
bear dog - Serge's lunch date from the day before - bounded around the
corner of the ladies' quarters and gallumphed eagerly up to them.
"Niri!" said Korra cheerfully, rubbing the giant dog's head.
"Good girl. Want to go into town? Oh, have you met Serge?"
Niri turned and lowered her great head to look Serge in the
face; the tiger gazed back for a second, then closed his eyes and rubbed
his cheek affectionately against hers, to contented sounds from both.
Korra blinked. "... I guess so," she said, then grinned and
said, "OK! We're off."
They made for an eyecatching group even in Republic City: a
couple of brown-haired foreign girls in what were, by local standards,
rather odd clothes, the elder carrying a walking stick, the younger
wearing a sword; a large, black-striped orange beast resembling nothing
so much as an unarmored tigerdillo; and a dark-skinned, violet-haired,
thoroughly pregnant young woman sitting sidelong on the back of what was
unmistakably the Avatar's polar bear dog, bearing a lemur on her
shoulder. Compared to that lot, the gangly teenage Air Nomad and the
Avatar herself seemed almost commonplace to the patrons of the Railway
Square street market.
They browsed the market for half an hour or so, making small
purchases and enjoying the convivial atmosphere. When they regrouped
near the statue of Fire Lord Zuko, Korra was giggling about something.
"You appear to have discovered something amusing," Kaitlyn
observed.
Korra angled a thumb back toward the marketplace with a grin.
"My cousin Kemba has a stall here, selling Southern Water Tribe
handicrafts - blankets, wall hangings, that kind of thing. She tells me
Corwin and Utena were here yesterday. She took him for a northerner.
Just finished five minutes on how he needs to get more vitamin D." She
giggled again, then said, "You'd have to know Kemba."
The United Republic Museum, as it turned out, was a handsomely
presented and meticulously curated institution, housed in a sprawling
and impressive but not intimidating building downtown. It covered
rather more than just the relatively short history of the United
Republic of Nations; it also included a section on the connection
between Diqiu and Zipang, from various primeval encounters between
worlds that were not recognized as such at the time, up through the
early modern contacts and the process by which the two worlds finally
and formally acknowledged one another, opened trade routes, and whatnot.
Utena soaked it all up, pleasantly reminded of the two days
she'd spent in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto not long after
finding herself in Midgard. The parallels were many - exploring a
curious new world through the medium of how its own inhabitants saw
their shared past - but one thing was very different. Though she'd been
part of a group at the Royal Ontario, she'd also been alone in a very
fundamental and, on the second day, peculiarly painful way. Today? Not
so much.
Case in point: In the wing about the history of Republic City
itself, there was a large and thoughtful display of artifacts and
explanatory placards concerning a major civil disturbance that had taken
place in the city some time before. At the Royal Ontario, she'd have
absorbed this in silent contemplation, filing the bits she didn't
understand away for later filling-in of the missing context that would
hopefully cause them to make some retroactive sense. Here, she could
just ask Corwin.
She was helped a bit by the fact that the United Republic
Museum, virtually alone among the places she'd been to in Diqiu so far,
had mostly bilingual signage. Half of it was in Tongyu, of course, but
the other half at least attempted to be in Standard. A lot of the time
the Standard part made about as much sense as the directions for that
Neo-Taiwanese crystal dubber Kaitlyn had bought on eBay one time, but
she could at least usually tell when a given placard was about, say, the
people depicted in an adjacent photograph, and not something to do with
the historical value of the picture frame. She still had to ask Corwin
a lot of the time, but at least she had a place to start.
She was standing looking at one of the photographs in a large
and artfully presented montage, set along a rough timeline of the
incident, when it hit her.
"Hang on a second," she said, indicating one of the photos near
the beginning of the line. "That's Korra."
Corwin looked. "Yes it is," he agreed. The picture showed her
standing on the steps of an imposing-looking building - Utena assumed it
was City Hall - declaiming into a pleasingly retro-looking cluster of
microphones.
"But then this... " Utena pointed to the explanatory placard
beneath that photo. "Am I reading this right? Is it -translated-
right? If it is, and I am, it says this photo was taken in -2289.-"
"Yeah, that sounds about right," said Corwin, not appearing
surprised. He took a closer look at the placard in question, then
frowned. "Has Korra never -come- here? You'd think she would have told
them by now that their Standard translations are a bit tragic. But no,
you're reading it right. Korra's... let me think... she'll be 138 next
month."
Utena took a moment to gauge how likely it was that he was
messing with her. Then, bearing in mind all the different ways in which
the lifespans of other people she and Corwin knew had been extended, she
asked wryly, "OK, so, is that an Avatar thing, or a drank-from-a-magic-
well thing, or... ?"
Corwin looked back at her, his expression becoming suddenly
pensive, and his voice was slightly sad as he replied, "Actually, I
don't know."
She blinked, startled by the sudden change in his demeanor.
Sensing that this wasn't the place to explore the matter further, she
touched his arm, telling him with that gesture and her eyes - all she
needed after all this time - that she wanted to come back to it another
time; then she left him to his thoughts for a moment and made her way
down the timeline of the incident.
This took her perhaps a quarter of an hour, allowing for time to
both read and then untangle the photo captions. By the time she reached
the end of the exhibit, she thought she had a reasonably good handle on
what had happened, and it didn't give the impression that it had been
good times.
The timeline ended at a glass display case containing a
mannequin clothed in a strange and dismaying costume, dominated by a
hooded coat and a freaky mask that looked like it might be smirking.
Utena stood regarding the mask a while, considering what it must've been
like at the time. In this well-lit museum gallery, under glass and on
the head of a lifeless dummy, it looked vaguely comical, but Utena
suspected that to someone on the receiving end of that cold porcelain
smirk, it had been anything but.
"OK," said Utena, "I'm getting the distinct impression that this
is not one of the good guys."
"No," said Corwin, stepping up alongside her and putting a hand
on her shoulder. "No it is not. This is a representation of Noatak,
alias Amon, the figurehead of the Equalist 'revolution'. Actually more
of an insurrection, but I suppose the difference there is usually who
wins," he added dryly.
Utena looked more closely at the accompanying placard, able to
decipher more of its fractured Standard with that context. "... a
powerful... bloodbender? That doesn't sound encouraging."
"Nnnno," Corwin agreed. "It's pretty much what it says on the
tin. A particularly vicious spin on waterbending - sort of thing the
phrase 'black art' was coined for."
Utena folded her arms and regarded the mannequin. "Hm. Dark
magician in a creepy mask leading a millennial cult. That's not obvious
or anything."
"Being obvious was the whole idea," Corwin told her. "Keep
people looking at the spectacle so they don't notice the real chicanery.
Think of the guy who ran that Black Rose thing... "
DEEDLIT SATORI MANDEVILLE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE
JERADDO, REPUBLIC OF BAJOR
CENTAURUS SECTOR
Dr. Roland Tielfeld looked up from the datapad he was examining
and considered the two well-dressed young men who sat across his desk
from him. The elder was regarding him with a frank and likeable
expression, the very picture of a youthful, idealistic researcher ready
to get started on what he considered important work. The younger,
identified in the documentation on Tiefeld's datapad as a graduate
research assistant, looked ever-so-slightly but politely bored.
Remembering his own grad-school days, Tiefeld couldn't help but smile a
little, internally. That was a long time ago, but he could still recall
how dull the endless round of conferences with administrators and
corporate executives had been - conferences in which he had been
expected only to appear and let his elders do all the conferring.
"Well, Professor Nemuro," said Tiefeld, putting down the
datapad. "Everything seems to be in order, though I confess I'm
surprised that you've chosen to begin your study so late in the school
year."
Professor Hideki Nemuro smiled engagingly. "Oh, not at all, Dr.
Tiefeld," he replied. This is the perfect time to do it. When your
students return from their spring recess, they'll be entering by far the
most stressful part of the academic year. What better time to conduct a
study on the incidence of stress disorders in high-achieving students?"
"Hmm. I suppose you do have a point there," Tiefeld agreed.
"Now, all this is in our project abstract," Nemuro went on, "but
I want to make absolutely certain I've made it as plain as can be: We're
not here to replace or supplant the student counseling services your
institution already offers. I've read a great deal of Professor
Haineley's body of work, and I would never presume that I or Kuroda here
could do the job half as well as he can. We're merely here to catalog
this school year's stress factors, and observe and record the student
body's responses to them. We'll refer those volunteers who need actual
help to the people already best-placed to deliver it. This is basic,
long-term research we're doing here. There'll be no names or other
identifiable specifics in any of our documentation."
Tielfeld nodded. "Thank you, Professor, and I appreciate your
position on the matter," he said. "At this institution's predecessor,
we did have certain... difficulties... with student counseling services
that were imposed from without."
"Well, Dr. Tiefeld, you have my personal assurance that there
will be no such problems this time," said Nemuro positively, with a nod
that was so enthusiastic it was nearly a seated bow.
DSM's president reflected for a moment longer on what he'd just
read and heard, then said, "Very well. The Institute is still growing,
so we have a second Residence Group that's mostly vacant this year.
I'll check with Residential Life and find out where the best place to
put you will be. You should be able to start setting up tomorrow."
"That sounds perfect," said Nemuro. "I believe classes resume a
week from then?"
"That's correct," Tiefeld confirmed.
"Excellent. Plenty of time for us to set up." He smiled.
"It's not as if we have many needs as regards equipment, after all.
We're mainly just talking to people." He rose and offered a hand.
"Thank you for your help, Dr. Tiefeld. It may be some time before the
major benefits of our work reach the field, but without basic research
like this... "
"Of course," agreed Tiefeld. "We're always happy to support the
advancement of the academic sciences." He shook first Nemuro's hand,
then his assistant's. "Good day, Professor Nemuro, Mr. Kuroda. I'm
sure we'll be seeing each other often over the next few weeks."
"I'm sure," Nemuro echoed. "Good day, Dr. Tiefeld."
As they were crossing the footbridge over Highway One to Main
Parking B, Touga Kiryuu gave his "graduate advisor" a sardonic look and
remarked, "-That- was easy."
"Why should the poor man be suspicious of us?" Souji Mikage
replied, shrugging. "Our credentials are perfectly valid. The
University of Tothis is a fully accredited institution."
"And a wholly owned subsidiary of Shrine Investment Partners."
"One would almost think you -wanted- this to be harder, Mr.
Kuroda," Mikage chided him, plipping the remote-control locks of their
rental car.
"Perhaps I've merely grown suspicious of success, Professor,"
said Touga dryly.
REPUBLIC CITY PARK
REPUBLIC CITY, DIQIU
"This is my favorite spot in the whole city," Korra proclaimed,
plopping down on the grassy slope of a small hill in the middle of the
park. The hill would've been the end of a peninsula jutting out into
the lake, except that a narrow strip of water crossed the isthmus behind
it; this rendered it an island, reached by a pair of handsome stone-arch
bridges on either side.
"I can see why," said Anthy, smiling. Moving carefully, she
descended the ramp Korra had earthbent up to Niri's side for her, then
seated herself next to the Avatar. Korra leveled the grass out again,
waited for Kate to unsling the picnic basket they'd picked up at the
market from Niri's back, then nodded to the dog, who rose to her feet
and waded happily into the lake.
"It's not -just- because it's pretty and tranquil," Korra said.
"It has sentimental value." She indicated a small round dedication
plaque at the foot of the stone lantern which stood behind them, at the
top of the low hill that was the island. Anthy turned, leaning back on
an elbow, and read it:
ON THIS SPOT IN 170 ASC,
AVATAR KORRA WAS FORMALLY
WELCOMED TO REPUBLIC CITY
BY SEAMAN-TELEGRAPHER GOMMU
OF THE UNITED FORCES.
Anthy's smile widened a little. "That's sweet," she said.
"Was there some sort of formal reception?" Anne asked.
"Nah," Korra said, then corrected herself, "Well, there was, but
later, and it was just a show. You know how those things are. Gommu
was my real introduction to Republic City. A good man; I miss him.
That's why I let the city put this plaque here," she added, gesturing to
the marker again. "Most of them I vetoed." She rolled her eyes. "I
don't think anyone today really wants to know that I was once arrested
for vigilantism on San Hua Bridge, for instance," she added, drawing a
laugh from the others.
Like Corwin and Utena had the day before, the five (or eight,
depending on how you count them) ate a picnic lunch, enjoying the
afternoon sunshine and the restful greenness of the park. After lunch,
they turned to various gentle recreations. Niri and Serge frolicked in
the lake. Kate and Anne went across the bridge to the west into a small
meadow, and there did a bit of work with their blades covered, so as not
to alarm passers-by, while Nyima watched and cheered them on. Anthy and
her lemur played with a toy boomerang the former had bought from Korra's
distant cousin Kemba in the market; Anthy would throw it out over the
lake and then wait while the lemur intercepted and retrieved it, with
the added bonus that if he missed it, it would come back anyway.
"You've got a pretty good eye for that," Korra remarked as Anthy
sent the boomerang soaring out over the water again.
"Thank you," said Anthy. "As a girl I honed my skill by
skipping rocks on a pond near our home. I was always better at it than
my brother. Do you have any brothers or sisters, Korra?"
Korra shook her head. "Nope, only child. I was more than my
poor parents could keep up with all by myself, I think." She lay back
on the grass, hands behind her head, and smiled up at the sky. "Where's
your brother these days?" she wondered.
"He died," said Anthy. Korra blinked, then sat up again, her
face reddening. Before she could stammer out an apology, though, Anthy
smiled and patted her arm. "It was long ago," she said. "I can't say
I'm over it - one never really is 'over' such a thing - but nowadays I
can focus on the good parts rather than the bad. I love him very much,
and I do what I can to honor his memory. He was a good man, a kind and
just man. Utena is very like him in many ways - as is Corwin."
Korra smiled at that and lay back down again. "They're a
matching set, all right." She turned her head so that she could meet
Anthy's eye, her smile becoming a little wry. "Feels a little weird
saying that to you, of all people."
"Oh, I quite agree, believe me," Anthy assured her. "Yesterday,
while you were all off doing whatever you were doing, I had a
fascinating conversation with your friend Jinora," she went on, her tone
light and casual. "Much of it centered on the three of us, what we mean
to each other, and whatnot. She seems to be a woman who likes to know
exactly where everyone stands."
Korra laughed. "Yeah, she's that."
"I'm not sure I was able to satisfy her entirely in that
regard," Anthy went on with a mischievous little glint, "as we aren't
completely sure of all the particular ourselves, but I gave it my best
shot." She accepted the boomerang from the lemur yet again, thanking
him cordially.
"You've made a friend," Korra observed. "Between you and
Corwin, you'll be taking half the island back with you." She glanced
across the channel, to where Nyima sat watching Kaitlyn and Juniper
practice. "Particularly if Nyima runs away to join your circus."
"Mm," said Anthy sympathetically, petting the lemur. "Jinora
told me she's... somewhat enamored of Corwin."
"That's Jinora-ese for 'hopelessly besotted with,'" Korra
explained helpfully. "Not that she'd ever make her own play for him,
particularly now that he's married. She's too honorable for that. And
anyway, she's got this crazy idea that she's ugly."
"I know," said Anthy. "She mentioned it when we met yesterday.
Not looking for sympathy, I don't think, just... presenting it as what
she perceives as a matter of fact. She's a very sincere young woman. I
like her."
"Everybody likes Nyima," Korra confirmed. "How can you not?
She's like a gold coin. Says what she's worth right on her face."
Anthy chuckled. "Well," she said, "we'll just have to try and
disabuse her of some of her wilder notions a little bit at a time, I
suppose. Eh, Makoto?" she added, scritching the lemur, who purred
contentedly.
Korra looked over, smiling. "Is that 'Makoto' as in sincerity
or 'Makoto' as in truth?" she wondered.
"Does it matter?" Anthy replied cheerfully.
"I suppose not," Korra acknowledged with a laugh.
Corwin was slightly out of sorts for the rest of their time at
the museum. In fact, Utena realized as she watched him gaze
thoughtfully at a display of the widely varied currencies that could be
found in Republic City at the time of its founding, his demeanor
reminded her of the way she'd felt at the Royal Ontario. He was in the
grip of a melancholy that had seized him suddenly, or possibly one that
he had been carrying for a while, and that he had abruptly ceased to be
able to fend off. He did his best to conceal it while they had lunch in
the museum's excellent commissary, and for the hour and a half or so it
took them to finish the west gallery after lunch, but he had never been
any good at hiding his feelings in general or from Utena in particular,
and she saw through the attempt without even trying.
She let it alone, though, until they left the building. As they
descended the marble front steps, she took his hand and said, "Hey.
Talk to me."
"About what?" he asked unconvincingly.
"You know what," Utena told him. "You've been bummed out since
I asked you about Korra's age. I don't get it. She's... she's -young.-
She doesn't seem any older than I am. Surely that's a -good- thing."
"It is," Corwin agreed, "but... " They reached the car, but
rather than get in, he stopped next to it and turned to face her. "We
don't know -why- she is. If you ask her - and I have, it won't surprise
you to learn that I was a -catastrophically- blunt five-year-old," he
added with a flash of wryness that made her smile for a moment, "she
just laughs it off with something about clean living and deep chi
reserves. But really, I'm pretty sure she doesn't know. And if we
don't know how or why she's stayed young for so long, then we can't
know... how long it'll last."
Corwin hesitated, eyes downcast, considering what he was to say
next; then he raised them to hers and went on, "That's why I'm so angry
at the White Lotus. I've tried to hide it from her, so as not to pile
on any more angst, but I am, I'm -furious.- 'Cause, see... " He
paused, wrestling with the words; Utena took his hands, linking her
fingers with his, and he went on, "Nall and I, we're used to the idea
that most of our loved ones are likely to make it at least as far as we
do. And the ones who don't, well... we'll have plenty of warning, at
least. But Korra? She isn't aging, but as far as we know she's still
mortal. She might live until Fimbulvetr. Or tomorrow afternoon she
might just... stop. We just don't know. Nobody knows. -She- doesn't
know. So every day they stole from us... "
Corwin trailed off and closed his eyes, head bowed. Utena
gathered him into a hug. It occurred to her that death was not, in and
of itself, always an obstacle for Corwin - not to put too fine a point
on it, he had an apartment in Valhalla and many of his best friends were
dead people - but he was too obviously upset for her to mention it.
Plainly the situation was more complicated than that, and bringing it up
would just have seemed flippant. Besides, she'd caught something of his
mood herself now, and a cyclone of emotions and memories were rushing
through her heart and head as she held him. It wasn't a time for
splitting hairs.
They stood there for perhaps as much as a minute, arms around
each other, heads on each other's shoulders, just holding on, before he
added quietly into her hair,
".... Well, I'm sort of taking it personally, is all I'm
saying."
Utena hugged him a little tighter, making a wordless sound of
agreement. In his place, she'd have felt the same. She -did- feel the
same, or something like it, at the thought that this had been done, this
precious bond forcibly attenuated for -years,- because of her own
reputation for... what would you even call it? Contributing to karmic
instability? How -dare- they?
"We'll get some answers tomorrow," she promised him.
"You bet we will," he agreed.
They held on for another few moments, then stepped back and
looked at each other, verging on tears and summoning matched wan smiles
in their place.
Then Utena managed a grin and said, "C'mon. We'll be late for
the race."
THE UEHARA LIMITED
COUNTRYSIDE WEST OF UEHARA, ZIPANG
Amy, Rory, and Nall were all lounging around their compartment
reading when the train entered a tunnel. None of them took any
particular notice of this - the country west of Saikyo was hilly, so
tunnels had been a common experience on the run to Uehara - until,
somewhere in the ceiling above them, a bell rang. It reminded Rory and
Amy of the ones that announced the end of class periods at DSM, except a
little more musical and not as loud. They'd never heard this one
before, though, and they looked up in mild surprise as it sounded. Rory
glanced at Nall and saw that he was grinning, but before he could ask
whether he knew what the bell meant, he heard another, much more
peculiar sound. It was a sort of mechanical clatter, and it seemed to
be coming from somewhere outside the train. And it was -moving;- it
racketed invisibly along the wall of the compartment, from front to
back, and faded away to the rear.
Amy turned and looked back, not that there was anything to see
but the bulkhead at the rear of the compartment, then faced front again
and asked, "What was that?"
"We just crossed the Veil," Nall explained. "That was what the
bell was for. The other noise - well, I'll show you when we stop in Ba
Sing Se." He grinned again. "It's pretty cool."
The train pulled into Ba Sing Se Central Station (having, as a
Limited, bypassed local stations at both the outer and inner walls and
half a dozen places in between) two hours later, and the voice on the
overhead - now speaking Tongyu and Standard instead of Japanese and
Standard - told passengers that they were free to detrain at this stop
if they wished, but that if they were going on to points west, they
would please not go beyond the station concourse and be back aboard in
no more than 30 minutes. Locking up the compartment behind them, the
three climbed down onto the platform.
"See?" said Nall, gesturing to the train. For a second Amy and
Rory didn't see what he was getting at, until they looked again and saw
that the lettering on the side of their carriage had changed. No longer
did it say UEHARA LIMITED in alternating Japanese and Standard. Now the
non-Standard markings were in Tongyu, and the Standard lettering read
REPUBLIC CITY LIMITED. Looking more closely, Rory saw that the lettered
areas were hinged in the middle, like the numbers on old-fashioned
digital alarm clocks.
"I love this place," said Nall cheerfully. "It's like one of
Sumire Kanzaki's spy movies. C'mon, let's hit the concourse. There
used to be a food stall out there that made the -best- egg custard
tarts... "
REPUBLIC CITY PARK
REPUBLIC CITY, DIQIU
What finally drew Korra and her group from their idyll on Gommu
Island was neither hunger, for their picnic had been ample, nor
nightfall, which was still hours away; it was music. This came drifting
along on the early afternoon air from somewhere to the west, drawing
first Kaitlyn, then all the rest to follow and see where it led. This
turned out to be a concert shell, similar to the one that stood on the
Grand Common of Avalon Centre Park. Kate had spent many a happy
Foundation Day and New Year's Eve standing within earshot of that one,
listening to the New Avalon Symphony Orchestra do their thing.
This one had the band set up in front of it, not on it, because
the shell itself was occupied by a group of colorfully costumed actors
putting on a musical play of some kind for a moderately-sized crowd.
Having arrived, she would guess from the music she'd heard on the way
over, somewhere toward the end of Act I, Kate had very little idea what
was going on, but the score wasn't bad. She made a mental note to look
into including more parts for erhu in some of her own works.
The others caught up to her a minute or two later, at which
point, seeing the actors' costumes, Korra laughed, keeping her voice
down for the sake of nearby patrons of the arts.
"Oh, man, Love Amongst the Dragons? Haven't seen -this- in a
while," she said quietly. Turning to the others, she asked, "Do you
guys want to stay for the rest of this? It's probably not gonna make
much sense without the first act."
Anne grinned and replied, "I don't think we have a choice." She
indicated her attentively listening swordmaster. "We'd need a taser to
get Kaitlyn-sensei away from here now that she's interested in their
orchestra."
Korra turned and craned her neck to see the stage over the
audience's heads. "Let's see... OK, yeah, it's the Hira'a Acting
Troupe. That's a relief. The Ember Island Players come through here
every year on their tour and -murder- this one. These guys are all
right."
That seemed to settle the question. Without further
consultation, they found seats at the end of a row near the back, where
they wouldn't have to disturb anyone to get seated, and where Serge and
Niri could lurk behind them without annoying anybody, then settled in to
get their drama appreciation on.
FUTURE INDUSTRIES RACEWAY PARK
FUTURE CITY, DIQIU
Corwin and Utena were not, in fact, late for the race, but only
by virtue of having run one of their own to get there in time. The man
selling tickets recognized them - from the Tribune, presumably - and
wouldn't hear of them sitting all the way at the back of the grandstand;
instead, he ushered them to what was obviously a VIP box, where most of
the people seemed to be middle-aged and dressed as if for a night at the
opera. They looked curiously at the dressed-down young foreigners being
shown into their section, but without hostility; a few smiled and nodded
to them, but most were just cordially indifferent.
The man who seated them handed each a sheet of paper on which
was printed the afternoon's schedule of events. Utena folded hers up
and tucked it away in the top pocket of her Frostproof shirt, since she
couldn't read it anyway. From somewhere in the near distance, on the
other side of the long, low building opposite the main-straight
grandstand, came the sounds of high-performance engines being revved and
fettled as the racing teams got ready for the main event.
"This isn't one of those places where everyone sings along with
the national anthem, is it?" she asked Corwin with a wry smile. "I feel
conspicuous enough -without- having to sing along to a song I don't know
any of the words to. Or the language it's in."
Corwin grinned. "Some do, but nobody will think it's weird if
you don't," he assured her. "I don't remember how it goes my - "
"Corwin!" a voice cried from off to their right. They turned to
see a tall and handsome young man in an old-fashioned racing suit, all
red and black leather with orange accents, standing in the grandstand
aisle, his arms outstretched in welcome. He had a pair of matching
leather gauntlets held loosely in one hand; from that wrist, a crash
helmet dangled by its chin strap.
"Hey! Ryo!" said Corwin, delighted. He rose and went to shake
the man's free hand.
"I haven't seen you for goatdog's years, boy!" said Ryo. "Where
have you been keeping yourself?"
"It's not where I've been keeping myself, it's where other
people have been keeping me," Corwin replied. "Or keeping me out of.
It's a long story. Jeez, man, look at you!" he added, taking a half-
step back and spreading his hands.
Ryo swung open the gate in the low wall surrounding the VIP box
and stepped inside, mimicking the gesture in return. "I was about to
say the same thing. You're -huge-, son!"
"Don't you 'son' me, you're what, six weeks older?" said Corwin,
rolling his eyes.
"And who is -this- astonishing personage?" asked Ryo, turning
twinkling green eyes to Utena as she stepped up alongside Corwin.
Corwin made introductory gestures. "Utena, meet Ryo Sato. I'm
assuming he doesn't own the company yet, but you never know, I've been
away for a while."
Ryo grinned. "No, no, are you kidding? The only way I'll ever
own this company is if my darling sister finally manages to write a
check her talent can't cash, and the spirits won't allow that to happen.
Then -they'd- have to deal with her," he added, his grin becoming a
little bit toothy.
"Ryo, this is Utena Tenjou... " Corwin let Ryo take Utena's
hand and get all the way down into his most elaborate bow, touching his
forehead to the back of it, before he added with a sly little smile and
a wink for her, "... my wife."
Ryo looked up, remaining in his bow, and gave a theatrically
suspicious look first to Utena, then to Corwin.
"-What- you are -talking about,- son," he said skeptically.
"I'm afraid it's true," said Utena, gently retrieving her hand
and bowing to him Nihonia-fashion. "I just found out the day before
yesterday!" she added, then shrugged. "Still trying to figure out how
it happened."
Ryo straightened up and gave a merry laugh, hands on hips. "Oh,
you're good," he said. "You're very good." He turned to Corwin,
pointing to Utena. "She's very good," he added, as if Corwin might not
have noticed it before.
A horn sounded somewhere off in the direction of the engine
noises, which, Utena noticed, had settled down to a low rumble sometime
while they'd been talking. Ryo looked up like a hunting dog. "Hark! I
am summoned." He grinned at them again. "Wonderful meeting you, we'll
simply have to get better acquainted after the race. Not in that way,
you're married." He straightened up and adjusted the collar tab of his
racing suit with a put-on air of affronted dignity. "Control yourself,
woman!" Then he clouted Corwin on the shoulder and said, "And you, my
son, have some explaining to do! Cheer for us! Number 22, you can't
miss us, we'll be the one with the maniac driving." He hurried off,
calling back, "Ta ta!" before vaulting the rail at the front of the
grandstand, dropping lithely to the track, and dashing across toward the
garages.
"You know the most -interesting- people," Utena observed with a
smile as they went back to their seats. "Avatars, airbenders, race car
drivers... "
"Ryo's not driving," Corwin said with cheerful certainty.
"Minami would never put up with that. He'll be backseating for her.
Story of his life... "
The Future Industries Historic Grand Prix was a thrilling
affair, and a kind of motor racing Utena had never seen before. She'd
seen a number of races billed as "vintage" before - the Nekomi Institute
of Technology Motor Club, of which she was a member (or had been - was
she in fact still a -student- at NIT? She'd have to check into that, it
had been a very odd year), held vintage and retro events quite often.
Few of them were -this- vintage, though, skinny-tires-and-two-person-
crews vintage.
The driver of car no. 22 was indeed a woman, although beyond
that Utena couldn't tell much. She had long, dark hair drawn back in a
ponytail that trailed from under her helmet, but her goggles and a sort
of bandit mask completely obscured her features. Watching her work,
though, Utena was satisfied that Ryo had been right: the girl was
certainly a maniac.
She was a -talented- maniac, though, and though she spent the
entire race flirting with the razor line between the aggression that
wins races and the aggression that causes a huMONgous accident, she
never quite strayed over it. On the occasion when she did come closest
to a crash, it wouldn't have been her fault - a car that she was in the
process of lapping had a blowout and nearly swerved into her,
catastrophe avoided by lightning reflexes and the sort of precise car
control Utena associated with Dorothy Wayneright.
By race's end, Utena had cheered herself temporarily hoarse and
thought she had a decent idea what Ryo had meant when he talked about
his sister writing checks for her talent to cash. It had cashed them
all right on this occasion, though; car 22 (Sato, Minami and Ryo) won
the Grand Prix by nearly a full minute over the second-place finisher.
Minami Sato turned out to be so like her brother in appearance
that Utena at first took them for twins, like Miki and Kozue Kaoru. She
was a little taller and a lot more feminine, obviously, but the lines of
their faces were markedly similar, and they had the same emerald eyes
and slightly wavy black hair. Minami had a lot more of it, falling down
to her shoulder blades now that she'd taken it out of the ponytail she'd
worn for racing.
The Satos ran straight from the podium ceremony to intercept
Corwin and Utena before they could reach the parking lot, so when they
appeared, they were still just as they had come from the track. Minami,
in particular, was sporting a serious reverse raccoon effect from her
goggles and bandit mask, the latter still slung around her neck like an
oily kerchief. Sitting in back, Ryo had taken less of a spattering,
although, as if to balance that, he'd plainly taken the brunt of the
champagne-spraying in the winner's circle; his hair was still dripping.
"Corwin! It's true!" cried Minami cheerfully, lunging at him
for a jubilant hug without regard to her smudged condition. "I thought
Ryo was just messing with me."
"Nope, it's true," said Corwin, who didn't seem to mind.
"How've you been, Minami?"
"Oh, you know how it goes," Minami replied, falling into step
beside him as he walked across the parking lot. "It's a never-ending
whirl of social triumphs and technical marvels when you're a Sato. What
about you? You're certainly -looking- good," she added with an
uncomplicated smile. "I always told Ryo you'd - " She came to a sudden
halt, physical and verbal, as she caught sight of the Korramobile. "Is
that... " She blinked. "That's a P2X. No." She ran around to the
back and looked at the license plate, then up at Corwin. "It's -the-
P2X! How did you get this out of the Avatar Museum? Wait!"
Then, with a look of gleeful realization, she ran back around
and seized Corwin by the front of his jacket, giving him a shake.
"Corwin! Did you grow up to be a -gentleman burglar?!-" she demanded,
grinning widely into his face. "Do you have a heist team?" she went on,
getting more and more excited as she explored the idea. Nodding toward
Utena, she asked, "Is she your social engineer? (Spirits know he'd have
to have one,)" she added wryly to Utena with a wink, making her giggle,
before returning her gleeful eyes to Corwin. "Do you have a getaway
driver? Can -I- be your getaway driver? I will literally change my
face and let Ryo have the company if I can be the getaway driver in your
heist team."
"Well, you heard it here first, gang," said Ryo happily.
"Company's all mine now."
"Sorry to disappoint you both," Corwin said, gently disengaging
Minami's hands from his jacket, "but I am not, in fact, a gentleman
burglar." Eyeing her narrowly, he added, "And what was that crack about
social engineering supposed to mean?"
Minami pouted in disappointment. "Darn it! I thought I was
finally going to get a chance to live my dreams." She turned to Utena.
"So if you're not his heist team's social engineer, who are you?" She
sighed, shoulders slumping, and added in a tone of exaggerated
resignation, "Go ahead, tell me you're his girlfriend, dash what few
hopes I have left."
Unable to keep from smiling, Utena replied, "Actually, we just
got married."
Minami threw back her head, forearm to brow, and cried
dramatically, "O woe! Lamentations and rending of - " She seized the
panel on the front of her double-breasted racing jacket, then frowned
down at her hands and said in a more normal voice, "No, wait, this is
komodo rhino hide, I couldn't possibly rend it." She shrugged. "Guess
that plan's out, then." Grinning at Utena, she went on, "I don't
suppose I can interest you in a trade? My brother's not as smart,
funny, -or- handsome, but he's rich and very obedient."
"Oi!" Ryo objected.
"Sorry, not today," said Utena, grinning. "Give me a little
while for the shine to wear off, at least." Then she extended a hand.
"Utena Tenjou."
"Minami Sato," said Minami cheerfully, giving the hand a solid
pumping. "So! Who's hungry? I'm hungry! Dinnertime!" She started
for the car, but Corwin stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, so that
her feet almost walked out from under her before she could pull up.
"You're not getting in my nice clean borrowed priceless
historical relic in that condition," he told her, smiling, with a nod
toward her oil-smudged, champagne-damp clothes.
"Oh, pff, fine," Minami replied, pouting again. "We'll take MY
car, then."
They stashed the Korramobile in Minami's racing garage, next to
her racing car, where it would be secure, and then the four of them
somehow crammed into a tiny convertible that put Utena in mind of
Skuld's ancient Karmann Ghia. This did technically have a rear seat,
but only in a sort of theoretical, quantum-physics way. Still, Utena
had cause to be glad that she and Corwin were stuffed into a tiny,
confined space. Partly that was because she rarely minded being stuffed
into a tiny, confined space with Corwin, and partly it was because she
suspected it was the only reason they weren't thrown from the car every
time Minami took a corner, because she drove on the public streets
exactly the same way she had on the racetrack. Utena wondered whether
the car really had a crash gearbox, or if Minami was just double-
clutching to show off.
The way the Satos did dinner on the town after a race turned out
to be illuminating, and also a ton of fun. After a five-minute
barnstorm into the part of Future City where the factory workers lived,
they pulled up outside an utterly nondescript storefront. Once pried
out of the back, Utena and Corwin were ushered into an only slightly
less cramped space, lacking even tables and chairs: a restaurant that
appeared only one weight class up from a dive, and served only one
thing. This turned out to be hearty dumplings and soup in the Earth
Kingdom style, taken standing up at the counter, and it was as fantastic
as the setting was not.
And then up the street to another, similar restaurant where they
had the most amazing sushi. And then another where the roast duck would
blow your mind. And so on.
In this way, the foursome described a great circle through
Future City's working-class district, pausing again and again for small
quantities of spectacularly good food served in completely uninspiring
circumstances by surprisingly friendly people. Utena found herself
wondering how such a place could possibly remain a secret. Back in
Nekomikoka, a district like this would be -swarming- with foodies and
uptown hipsters, roaming around in hungry little packs like wolves in
loafers. Or maybe that had already happened and the fad had petered
out, mercifully returning the area to its original quiet excellence?
"Oh, nobody who doesn't work for the company comes down here,"
Minami reported when Utena put this to her outside the place with the
incredible sweet bean rolls. "They don't dare. They think it's full of
bolshie factory workers who would beat them senseless and take their
shoes." She grinned. "I think the locals encourage the myth. They
like it quiet."
"Would we be in trouble if we weren't with you guys?" Utena
wondered.
"Oh, no, not at all," Ryo assured her, leaning around the back
of his seat to face her. "Even the Triads up in Dragon Flats would
leave -you- two alone." He grinned. "They'd take one look at you and
know you'd wipe them out if they crossed you. Triads are great judges
of character."
"Oh, stop it, Ryo," Minami chided him, pulling to a halt in
front of their next destination. "You watch too many movies."
"Good morning," said Azana cheerfully as the two finally trailed
into the Phoenix House lobby at half-past two AM. "Someone's been out
celebrating."
"It was like a pub crawl," Utena explained, "only with food
instead of booze."
"Well," Azana mused, riffling through the card index on her desk
behind the counter, "I'll just put you down for late checkout, shall I?"
"Thanks," said Utena. "Listen, if we don't see you again before
we leave, I want to thank you for taking such good care of us."
"So do I," Corwin agreed, nodding. "It's been really great."
Azana's smile was a tad enigmatic as she replied, "Oh, I expect
you'll be seeing me again soon. But you're very welcome. We've enjoyed
having you here, and we hope you come again."
"I wonder what she meant by that," Utena mused once they were
back in the Avatar Suite.
"Beats me," said Corwin with a shrug that turned into a
gargantuan yawn. "Oh, man. I forgot how exhausting it is hanging out
with those two. At least they're not drinkers."
Utena grinned. "Are you getting old?" she wondered.
"No, you're just wearing me out," he replied with a faint smirk
that earned him a punch in the shoulder. They changed for bed and
crashed, like the night before, too tired and replete with the day's
adventures to bother with anything else.
"You know what the best part was?" Utena asked after the lights
were out.
"Mm?" Corwin responded.
"The contrast. Last night, super-elegant dinner and dancing;
tonight, street food standing up in a blue-collar part of town. And I
can't say either one was better than the other." She hugged him from
behind, arms crossing over his chest. "This has been amazing. Thank
you."
"Wouldn't have been half as good without you," Corwin replied,
"but you're very welcome, elskr. Thank Korra too," he added, the
smile evident in his voice. "It was her idea."
"Oh, I intend to," Utena assured him. "I intend to."
/* Joe Satriani
"You Saved My Life"
_Strange Beautiful Music (2002) */
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
presented
UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES
FUTURE IMPERFECT
- Symphony of the Sword No. 5 -
SUITE FOR TRINITY AND AVATAR (THE DIQIU SUITE)
First Movement: Honeymoon by the Sea
The Cast
(in order of appearance)
Korra
Corwin Ravenhair
Utena Tenjou
Anne Cross
Rohan
Kaitlyn Hutchins
Anthy Tenjou
Sergei
Mogi
Zhang Wei (Phoenix House doorman)
Azana
Senjo
Gyatso
Meelo
Nall Silverclaw
Amy Pond
Rory Williams
Wong Jiang
Deng
Ito
Makoto (the lemur)
Nyima
Jinora
Toji Tazawa (U&SC ticket agent)
Kemba
Niri
The Daughters of Ming, Clothier
Emily Wong
Xie Hao (Velvet Palanquin bouncer)
Lhakpa
Skuld Ravenhair
Ren Watanabe (TBC messenger)
Chin XVII
Roland Tiefeld
Souji Mikage
Touga Kiryuu
Ryo Sato
Minami Sato
with
the Acolytes and Novices of
Air Temple Island
the Staff of the Phoenix House Hotel
the Faculty and Students of the
Fire Lord Zuko Firebending Academy
and
Baron Zoria and his Circle of Horns
Written by
Benjamin D. Hutchins
Philip Jeremy Moyer
with the aid of
The EPU Usual Suspects
The Diqiu Suite will continue in
Second Movement: What's Past Is Prologue
E P U (colour) 2013